8 1GT Wednesday December 2 2020 | the times

arts

S

o having decreed that we

should spend the long

winter evenings with

nothing to do except watch

television, the government

has now decided that we

are not to be trusted even

to do that without

guidance. Oliver Dowden, the culture

secretary, possibly prompted by the

Palace, has called for the Netflix series

The Crown to carry a health warning

for its audience to warn them against

confusing this multimillion-pound

drama with reality. I wonder if the

government is considering introducing

a tier system for royal-based drama —

we must at all costs protect the nation

from the deadly virus that makes

people confuse fact with fiction.

As someone who has written a TV

series about an earlier queen, Victoria,

I can testify that people can get very

worked up about what they see as a

misrepresentation of “reality”. I was

taken to task for, among other things,

my depiction of the relationship

between Victoria and her first prime

minister, Lord Melbourne, as having a

romantic undercurrent. I was accused

of turning Victoria’s early years into a

Mills & Boon romance, and, what’s

more, casting actors who were

considerably better looking than the

originals. I think these critics, like the

culture secretary, miss the point.

Victoria and The Crown are dramas —

they don’t claim to be anything else.

But any writer who writes about real

events will take their responsibilities to

their subjects very seriously.

I based my drama largely on

Victoria’s writing, her letters and

diaries. I took my version of her

feelings for Melbourne from those

diaries; for three years she writes

about almost nothing else but her

urbane and witty mentor. And it is

clear from the observations of

contemporaries that Melbourne had

what we now call “feelings” for

Victoria. My job as a dramatist is to

find a way of telling that story; of

course, I have no way of knowing what

they actually said to each other, but I

can make an educated guess. I read

the original sources not only as a

historian, but as a writer trying to

figure out what people have left out.

Victoria’s diaries, like Diana’s tapes,

are a tremendous resource, but both

sources are by definition unreliable

because they are telling the story from

one point of view. When Victoria

writes in her diary, “Lord M is such a

good man, one cannot help but love

Top: Jenna Coleman

in Victoria. Above:

Claire Foy and Matt

Smith in The Crown

him,” I think that she is telling the

truth, but when the producers of the

show suggested that I dramatise her

feelings for Melbourne with an on-

screen kiss, I refused because I knew

that would break the contract I had

with Victoria. I wanted to heighten

and compress her emotional life, but

I feel it is my job to make the drama

illustrate her character, not the other

way around.

As for the charge that TV viewers

might confuse dramas such as Victoria

and The Crown with reality, it is the

ultimate irony that an institution that,

from Victoria onwards, has cemented

itself in the public’s affections by

pretending to be a normal family

would complain when that fiction is

replaced by another.

Should the so-called fairytale

wedding of Charles and Diana have

come with a health warning to viewers

that the happy couple on screen were

nothing of the sort? Consider the

celebrated BBC documentary Royal

Family, in which the Queen and Prince

Philip grilled sausages over a barbecue

just like their subjects. Should that

have been prefaced with a rubric to

say that it had been staged for the

cameras and that, while they might

have barbecues, this one was spin?

Should every royal documentary

where so-called experts opine about

what Meghan thinks, or Diana

thought, or Victoria wanted, be

garlanded with warnings that

everything that is being said is

speculation? Should the stage manager

come on before a performance of

ITV; ROBERT VIGLASKY/NETFLIX

Relax, it’s a

drama and

nothing else

As a fiction warning is slapped on The

Crown, Daisy Goodwin, the creator of

Victoria, defends the right to embellish

Chernobyl

In the drama, Khomyuk, played by

Emily Watson, didn’t exist (she

represented a multitude of

scientists), and Legasov (Jared

Harris) didn’t go full Atticus Finch to

tell a court Chernobyl was down to

“lies”. Legasov was never at the trial.

The Durrells

The ITV drama is based on the books

by Gerald Durrell, who played fast

and loose with the facts. In the books

and the series Larry is single and

lives with the family. In reality he

moved to Corfu with his wife first.

Louisa (a wholesome Keeley Hawes)

was really a heavy drinker.

The Tudors

Egregious examples in this Showtime

soap opera include having Cardinal

Wolsey (Sam Neill) commit suicide

in prison (he died of natural causes)

and introducing wheeled carriages

and flintlock muskets, centuries

before they were invented.

Catherine the Great

If there were some small errors

(there were no peasants in the

Preobrazhensky Guards!) in the

Helen Mirren drama only history

buffs would be annoyed by them.

Britannia

Gollum-like druids, hallucinogenic

twig fumes, a soundtrack of

Donovan -- was the Roman invasion

of Britain ever like this? Unlikely.

Jez Butterworth’s drama set in

43AD is not overly concerned with

historical accuracy, although his

world of tunics and woad is a whole

lot more fun.

5 shows that

twist the truth

Richard III to warn the audience that

Shakespeare’s depiction of the king

might involve some dramatic licence?

I think that the consumers of royal

ephemera are capable of deciding for

themselves. Was Diana a vulnerable

product of a broken home with

abandonment issues, or an attention-

seeking hysteric who used the media

to her own ends. Both versions of the

“people’s princess” are out there — the

skill of a drama is to show that she

might have been both.

The really worrying thing for the

royal family is not that the story is

being told, but that, like analogue

television, it is becoming increasingly

irrelevant to a younger generation.

I remember as a young woman being

fascinated by Diana and the Windsors,

but for my 20-year-old daughter

Megxit and the Cambridges are as

irrelevant as a Morecambe and Wise

Christmas special.

For the generation that don’t read

newspapers or watch the news, the

royal family is no longer in their

consciousness. Just as the ratings for

TV soaps have declined for younger

viewers, so have the royal family’s.

My daughters have grown up

bingeing on box sets, so they don’t

have the patience to follow the

Windsor soap opera in real time. At

least The Crown puts its version of the

Windsor story in a place where the

millennials might actually come across

it. If Dowden really wants to do the

royals a favour he should beg Netflix

to put out a statement saying that

actually this is based on a true story

and that, when the world goes back

to normal, viewers can visit the real

Buckingham Palace and exit past the

gift shop. As the Queen has said, she

has to be seen to be believed; there is

a whole generation growing up who

don’t see her anywhere, except in

dramas such as The Crown.

Victoria is on Britbox

T J

I wanted to

heighten

and

compress

Victoria’s

emotional

life