Victoria season 3 episode 6, review: Avoids any attempt to reflect events in the outside world, and rightly so

The hasty lovemaking of Sophie, Duchess of Monmouth, and Joseph is a moment of climax for the series in more ways than one

I learnt a new word thanks to Victoria, ITV’s slow-moving biopic of her late majesty: “Hobbledehoy”. It is the epithet given by the crotchety head butler at the palace, Penge (Adrian Schiller), to footman Joseph, who has mysteriously gone missing.

It means a clumsy or awkward youth, but of course the handsome Joseph (David Burnett) is anything but those things, as we see him deftly administering a crafty knee-trembler to his mistress, in more senses than one, the lovely-but-married Sophie, Duchess of Monmouth (Lily Travers). The pair go about their hasty lovemaking in a dimly lit broom cupboard, a literally bodice-ripping scene – and thus, surely the ultimate in costume drama cliche. It is a moment of climax, then, for the series in more ways than one. Wham! Bam! Thank you, your grace!

For this episode, writer Daisy Godwin wisely avoided any attempt to reflect important events in the outside world, which is just as well because, even 170 or so years ago the monarchy had only the slightest influence on politics anyway. The nearest we get to life outside the palace is the design of a new coin. The action, if that is the right word, is thoroughly soapy. This works much better.

So, Princess Feodora, Victoria’s cartoonishly evil half-sister grows ever more manipulative and grasping. Played by Kate Fleetwood, Feodora bears an uncanny physical resemblance to another, much more famous, figure in British royal history, Wallis Warfield Simpson, who, unlike the real Feodora, was rather scheming. Feodora’s ’Allo ’Allo-style German accent also wobbles around central Europe a bit, and at one point she even sounded a bit South African. She actually says “vashervoman”. It is all somewhat distracting.

The penniless Feodora may or may not have sold some sketches of Victoria, her children and her dogs to The Illustrated London News, the 19th-century equivalent of Heat magazine. Though nothing on Squidgygate, or the long-lens pictures of Fergie having her toes sucked, it was shocking stuff for 1849 and, then as now, the public clamoured for more. The parallels with the media of today are subtly and entertainingly drawn.

Then as now, too, the monarch and her entourage fret and fret about getting the balance between the magic of monarchy and its popularity right. The king of the Belgians (Alex Jennings) loftily informs Victoria, in yet another cod-German accent, that “monarchy needs to be shrouded in mystery”, although the biggest mystery in this episode is why he spends so much time away from Brussels and hanging around Buck House. Though hard to believe, the producers really did have him explain “Gott im Himmel!”, like all good comic book Germans do, of course.

Contrariwise, fruity old Lord Palmerston (Laurence Fox), a Boris Johnson for his times, advises the Queen that her subjects might be more willing to pay for the upkeep of herself, her court and her seven (and counting) kids if she indulged the plebs and let them see a charming line-engraved print of her giving little Prince Bertie a bath.

In the end, Victoria’s prime minister, Lord Russell (John Sessions), solemnly informs her there is nothing that can be done to restrain the press in a free society. If only they’d had Ipso in those days, eh?

The highlight of the show, apart from the lusty below-stairs adventures of Lady Monmouth, is the unexpectedly violent barney between Victoria (Jenna Coleman) and Prince Albert (Tom Hughes), who are usually so lovey-dovey. In a screaming row about some astonishingly trivial aspect of etiquette, the Queen gives her prince consort a right old slap across his Saxe-Coburg-Gothic chops – and this despite the extreme disparity in their height. It is a sequence that could easily have been lifted from any number of fights between Barbara Windsor (no relation) as Peggy Mitchell and hubby Mitchell in the Queen Vic on Albert Square, which is, I suppose, sort of fitting. “Get aaht of my palace!” I yearned to hear Victoria tell Albert.

Two episodes to go, then, in this run, but the producers – still – haven’t revealed the secret of Prince Albert’s legendary intimate piercing. They are really are saving the best till last, just like all the best soaps.