Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Victoria has both the good and bad fortune to debut on PBS a week after Netflix’s similar royal soap, The Crown, won the Golden Globe for Best TV Drama. It’s bad because the two series, which are so similar on the surface, will undoubtedly be compared to one another (and The Crown is on paper a much better show) and it’s good because Victoria makes for a dreamy spiritual prequel to The Crown. The two ironically work astoundingly well as sister series. Victoria kicks off with an aura of hope. This Victoria (Jenna Coleman) is an energetic young queen navigating freedom and power and romance all at once. Whereas The Crown is the story of a similar young queen who finds herself buckling under the weight of duty to her family’s legacy.
Watching Victoria will enhance your understanding of Elizabeth II’s personal plights in The Crown — her reign is in the shadow of that Victoria’s legacy in more ways than can be counted. It is Victoria who moves to “dreary” Buckingham Palace to escape her mother and Sir John Conroy’s command (and thereby makes it the official royal residence that Elizabeth is forced to move her family into). It is Victoria who establishes certain protocols with her ministers to keep them on their toes (that results in Elizabeth making a faux pas in her first one-on-one with Winston Churchill). It is Victoria who expands the empire without any thought of how colonization might backfire in future centuries (as it will for Elizabeth II in Season Two of The Crown). And it is Victoria who has the most successful marriage in British history to a devoted and austere Prince (whom Phillip will never live up to). Heck, even Alex Jennings pops up again as a meddling royal uncle in Victoria. In The Crown he is Edward Windsor, a specter of what Elizabeth could be, and in Victoria his “Uncle Leopold,” the Belgian king who orchestrates Victoria’s marriage to her cousin Albert. The connection cannot be overlooked.
Victoria is very good, but it is still The Crown‘s inferior in many ways. The Crown finds its drama in the quiet moments where private emotions butt against public duty. It blends the dramatic sensibilities of a show like Mad Men with the inherent melodrama of the Windsor family’s history. And The Crown is expensive. Each scene looks cinematic in scope and there’s a lived-in accuracy to every tiny detail. For all its glamour, Victoria looks cheap by comparison. Landscape shots are done in shoddy computer animation, vast halls look empty, and Jenna Coleman’s baby blue contacts are eerie in their obviousness. Ironically, Victoria‘s “cheapness” gives a dreamy gauze to every scene. It heightens the sense of romance and fantasy. The Crown brings the life of Queen Elizabeth II into stark and gloomy focus, while Victoria twists that monarch’s early days in power into a romantic fairytale. The first episode is aptly called “Doll 123,” a reference to a childhood toy that the 18-year-old queen projects herself onto as her world shifts. Victoria feels like the indulgent version of the tale – it’s not as political as it could be and it’s far more seductive than it ought to be.
Yes, Victoria has one thing going for it that The Crown doesn’t: It’s an addictive romance. I literally haven’t been able to stop watching it.* The first two episodes focus on how Victoria became attached to her loyal Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell) and then the sexual tension gets ramped up to eleven when we finally meet Prince Albert (Tom Hughes). This Albert is a hot socially awkward nerd who likes art and honesty. Swooning is just about guaranteed.
Victoria premieres on PBS this Sunday, January 15th. It will be available to stream for free on PBS.org and the PBS apps shortly thereafter.
*Pro tip: Victoria is debuting the same weekend as A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Young Pope, Sneaky Pete, and the Sherlock Season 4 finale. These are all very good shows that are worthy of your viewing time. As good as Victoria is, it’s even better as a binge-watch, so if you need help juggling all this great TV this weekend, I would actually recommend saving Victoria for next weekend or even one of the following weeks. Why? Because once you meet the broodingly handsome Prince Albert, you’re going to want to binge as much as possible as soon as possible. Trust me.
