The Windsors

Note: This review is from 2016

TV review by Steve Bennett

The goings-on of the Royal Family have long been considered a soap opera, so why not make them into one? That’s the thinking behind Channel 4’s new comedy The Windsors.

But that is also its Achilles heel. As these people are already portrayed as in the press as pretty one-dimensional characters with instantly identifiable traits, what can a fictionalised version bring?

The answer, in George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler-Moore’s scripts, is sometimes not much. Prince Charles is out of touch, Prince William is a handsome hero, Fergie is boisterous and Beatrice and Eugenie are dim, spoiled Sloanes. It’s very familiar territory.

The show has more success with personalities we don’t know too well, allowing them to be reimagined as scheming villains – or rather villainesses. Camilla, whose public image is rather dull, here gets her Lady Macbeth on, while Pippa Middleton uses her feminine wiles to try to snare herself a Prince, like her sister did. These work especially well because of the deliciously vampish performances of both Haydn Gwynne, making a welcome return to TV comedy after Drop The Dead Donkey (and a small role in Uncle), and Morgana Robinson going over-the-top as per. Props too, go to Katy Wix, having a ball in her fun larger-than-life incarnation of Fergie.

But otherwise The Windsors is comparatively restrained, even though the plots are silly. It’s especially sober when compared to US series The Royals, with Liz Hurley as the scheming Queen, which plays up the Dynasty-style melodrama to ridiculous excess. other

Harry Enfield actually has quite an affectionate take on Prince Charles, obsessed with his Duchy biscuits, as well as doing a decent impression of the Heir. And although Louise Ford’s Kate Middleton is supposed to be a gypsy – a nod to her ‘commoner’ upbringing as a mere upper-upper-middle-class scion – she is just as plummy-voiced as the rest.

The opening episode of The Windsors has Wills defying his father to become a valiant helicopter pilot; Pippa trying to sink her claws into Harry – who remains besotted with Cressida or Chelsy, in one of the best running gags of the half-hour, he can’t remember exactly which; a washed-up Prince Edward scrabbling for cash; and Fergie trying to gatecrash a Buck House ball as her progeny combine their talents (doing make-up and owning an iPhone) to launch themselves into the allegedly ‘real’ job of YouTube stars.

There are some neat, if not side-splitting, lines and enjoyably daft premises, but the show never really takes off. A lot of the scenes have a touch of the Spitting Image about them for sure – but what works as sketch doesn’t necessarily sustain for a full narrative.

Jeffrie and Tyler-Moore have done this sort of thing before with the Star Stories series of unconnected celebrity yarns. Whether viewers will care enough about the fictional Windsors to tune in to see the same bunch of caricatures week after week is a more moot point. Especially when reports of their real-life antics are sensationalised enough.