Last week I did very well.  After the first episode of ITV’s Victoria, I managed to have a post out within half an hour.

Well, I haven’t quite managed to mimic that success and not only is this post late, it will have to cover my reflections on episodes 2 and 3.

So three episodes in, what are our thoughts?  Well, from a strictly historical point of view, things are getting a little far-fetched.  As I’ve said before, Victoria may have been infatuated with PM Lord Melbourne, but certainly on a conscious level, it was not a sexual thing.  Last night we actually saw the young sovereign propose to the aging man!  As Twitter rushed to point out, this was beyond ridiculous.

That being said there are some really lovely historical touches.  Their portrayal of Prince George of Cambridge (no, not that one – Victoria’s first cousin) was rather welcome and they correctly captured his reluctance to marry the plain Queen.  I also thought they managed the bed chamber crisis pretty effectively last week.

At the end of the day, this is a drama clearly billed as fiction not fact.  It does bother me that many viewers will be unable to separate the truth from the invention – but that’s not actually the fault of the programme maker!  Those of us who dream of a better educated public will just have to carry on blogging, tweeting and doing what we can to tell the amazing stories of our royal forbears, which I still believe are quite interesting in and of themselves without any further fabrication.

Next week the show sees a step change with the introduction of Albert.  I for one will still be watching.