Peter Viney's Blog

Created & written by Deborah Davis
Directed by Geoffrey Enthoven (episodes 5-8) and Pete Travis (episodes 1-4)
Music by Guillaume Roussel

TV Series 2022

8 episodes

BBC iPlayer

CAST:

Emilia Schüle  – Marie-Antoinette
Louis Cunningham – Louis XVI
James Purefoy- Louis XV
Gaia Weiss – Madame du Barry
Jack Archer – Provence
Roxane Duran – Joséphine, wife of Provence
Oscar Lesage – Chartres
Marthe Keller- Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria
Jonas Bloquet- Emperor Josef II
Nathan Willcocks – Austrian ambassador to France
Jasmine Blackborow – Lamballe of Savoy
Crystal Shepherd-Cross – Adelaide, sister of Louis XV
Caroline Piette – Victoire, sister of Louis XV
Christopher Bucholz – Mesmer

Like Versailles it is a Canal + French production in English

The thing is, the latest series of The Crown is terminally boring. We have struggled through four or five, yawning, making shopping lists, going out to make a hot drink (after all we know the story). The earlier series used to work, but once you take the glow of nostalgia away (it’s too recent to be nostalgic) it’s a story we know all too well about increasingly irritating and unlikeable people.

Then you realize how drama teachers were right to make girl students do classes in long practice skirts, because the plum jobs are TV series like Bridgeton, Sanditon, The Great, Versailles and here, Marie Antoinette. Maybe it’s easier for the current generation who grew up going to parties in Disney Princess dresses.

Poor Marie-Antoinette whose place in history is confined to one offhand remark, suggesting that those unable to obtain Hovis might gorge on gateaux instead. Has no one considered she might have been taking the piss? The series relies on the filming access to the French palaces which enlivened the Versailles series, to which it must be compared, and will be. It’s a French production in English to reach an international audience.

With such a well-known end, I’m hesitant to discuss plot spoilers, suffice it to say this is SERIES ONE. Marie Antoinette – The Origin Issue. So she survives it. I don’t know how many series they’ll squeeze out before the inevitable beheading. I’m not going to plot spoil, merely to set out the story.

Marie-Antoinette is an Austrian archduchess, daughter of Josef I and Marie-Thérèse. As such she is a tradable diplomatic commodity, and rather than humping a Hohenzollern or Hanoverian, or a fellow Hapsburg, she is to be traded off to bang a Bourbon. (Editor: No more alliteration, please). So off she goes in a coach and horses with scant accompaniment to marry the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne. To me, a Hapsburg princess, the daughter of the Empress Maria-Theresa, would have been entitled to more than two drivers and a couple of guards for a 655 mile trek from Vienna to Versailles. I looked it up. A coach could travel at around 10 mph on good surfaces, but in the 18^th century may have averaged 5 mph in rougher conditions. Let’s give it 7 mph, which means 93 hours. Nine hours a day bumping along? Ten days. No ladies in waiting? We presume they stopped at country houses and castles, not inns, which would have meant detours. Just the one dress? So my mind had wandered already.

At the border, the sensible French meet her on a bridge and dispatch her obnoxious yapdog lapdog back to Austria. I commend their early sense of the dangers of cross-border rabies transmission. I was hoping never to see it again. I was disappointed. They introduce her to an aristocratic instructor / chaperone.

Louis the Ex Vee is king, and his grandson, Louis, is dauphin. He will become Louis the Ex Vee Eye in the fullness of time, due to the French aristocracy having little imagination when bestowing names. Louis Ex Vee or ‘Papa roi’ lives with his mistress, Madame du Barry. He has two Ugly Sisters, Adelaide and Victoire, and Louis the Dauphin is his grandson. Louis’s brother, the Duc de Provence,  is the villain.

Another relative (face it, all this lot were all related in at least two ways, often more than two), the Duc de Chartres. He fancies Marie Antoinette who is now the ‘petite dauphine.’ She turns out to be feistier than anyone expected.

The issue in early episodes is that while Louis Ex Vee is a randy old bugger, and flaunts Madame du Barry as his mistress, the dauphin and dauphine have a problem. She is only fourteen and hasn’t started her periods yet (the wily Austrians haven’t told them) and Louis the Dauphin is an inarticulate, diffident, painfully shy youth who has zero interest in sex. Like so many royals, he gains sufficient entertainment slaughtering animals and birds instead. This may go on for several episodes. This is a man who will face the chopper in Madame Guillotine eventually, but has no idea what to do with his own chopper. His grandad gives him kind advice to no avail. Marie-Antoinette’s mum, the Empress of Austria continually sends messages via Mercy, the ambassador, reminding her to lie down, grit her teeth, and think of Austria.

The only thing that’s stiff then is the protocol of the French court, which Marie is to be taught. Curtseying, which knife and fork to use, how to fold a napkin, and so on. The Bourbons are sticklers for protocol and we must assume that in contrast, the Hapsburgs were laid back, chilled, not concerned with this sort of stuff. This seems highly unlikely. I’ve seen the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. As well as her appointed tutor, she has to put up with the stiff-necked sisters of the King, a pair of snappy, bitter spinsters too old to marry off to European royalty. They are therefore stuck in court, looking down their noses at everyone and everything and reminding all of ‘the rules.’ They’re a good double act, akin to having two Princess Annes.

Madame du Barry, Papa roi’s mistress is sent to instruct Marie-Antoinette in the arcane arts of seduction. Young Louis is sent off to a brothel for instruction. Meanwhile the avuncular and cheerful Papa roi is almost turning into Papa Paedo with an unhealthy interest in his little granddaughter-in-law. She is made to sit on his knee as they picnic in the grounds, thus exciting the enmity of Madame du Barry and the loathing of the sisters.

In case you think this is going to be exciting, I must warn lovers of the Versailles series that the bonking count is vastly lower in this and considerably less eclectic and imaginative.  There are hints that Marie-Antoinette is more than close to her female friends at court, though nothing approaching Versailles.

There are intrigues. The court is a load of comtes, who want to give Marie-Antionette le coude.  I’ve looked up the history on Wiki, and much seems fictionalized. She is befriended by the widowed Italian princess of Savoy. ‘Italian’ is probably inverted commas. They’re all cousins anyway. The mistress is intriguing away. The next brother, the Duc de Provence (Jack Archer) has been landed with an unattractive princess, Joséphine. They pretend she’s pregnant (a child will become next in line if the dauphine remains childless). The middle brother is upset at finding himself The Spare. That resonates somewhere. However, this dastardly brother turns out to have the generational issue (grandad was not afflicted) when he’s with Joséphine and Viagra will not be invented for more than two centuries. We know however that he does not have the same affliction with Madame du Barry.

Meanwhile a handsome German prince has his eye on Marie-Antoinette. Mesmer (inventor of mesmerism) and a fat Benjamin Franklin have fleeting appearances.

No more … I thought the performance of Louis Cunningham as the diffident Louis was outstanding, especially when Louis Ex Vee dies and he does become Louis Ex Vee Eye and has to cope with both family and court in-fighting and war. Emilia Schule has to start at age fourteen, and will go on to thirty-seven. Jack Archer and Roxanne Duran are a good double act, reeking of jealousy in the background. The filming and accompanying music, perhaps not quite up to Versailles standards, are first rate. Lots of silks and satins. It looks gorgeous.

There isn’t that tension that causes binge watching. I’d guess we calmly watched eight episodes over about a fortnight. Yes, we’ll definitely watch series two. There have been pointers to the fickle affections of the Paris populace. So far, they’re applauding her every move. That’s the way it goes. Fictional? OK, but it’s much more entertaining than The Crown.