It’s a tricky proposition, poking fun at the royal family. It’s no longer the mainstream pursuit it once seemed to be. If you were a kid growing up in the 1980s or early 1990s, you could be forgiven for assuming that they were fair game; awkward, distant figures who could not only withstand a ribbing, but who practically demanded one. Spitting Image regularly gave them an absolute beasting and my own Prince Charles impression always attracted a crowd in the playground, provided that there weren’t any double-jointed kids around to steal the limelight.
Those were more uppity times. Savaging the royals via exquisitely observed mimicry isn’t something I imagine kids spend much time doing these days. I’m not sure anyone does. William and Harry got hot, the Queen did that skit with Daniel Craig for the Olympics and we now exist in a cosy world of jubilees and royal barges and royal babies and 90th birthdays. People look at you blankly when you say, “Hey, remember It’s a Royal Knockout?!” or attempt to reminisce about the Queen Mother’s teeth, and instead want to talk about how cute Prince George is. Which, well yes, he obviously is. But it’s not exactly A-grade material for satire, is it?
All of which is why I was intrigued to see how The Windsors would play out. In 2016 a comedy series in which members of the royal family are variously portrayed as stupid, grasping and out of touch sounded almost daring. Chuck in plotlines that include Pippa Middleton attempting to seduce Prince William, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie becoming radicalised Muslims and the Duchess of Cambridge contracting ebola, and we could be dealing with the kind of disrespectful black comedy that would genuinely — genuinely — upset London cab drivers. Which, I’m not going to lie, I was up for.
And yet no. Not a bit of it. It was just daft, throwaway stuff that more often than not had the feel of sketch-show offcuts. No bite, no punch, just running jokes about Prince Harry not being able to read and Sarah Ferguson being a desperate freeloader. “Time to do what I do best!” she announces, having snuck into a party at Buckingham Palace. “Drink four bottles of chablis and flash my freckly bangers!” So yeah. That kind of stuff.
Harry Enfield showed up as Prince Charles. And while I’ll never begrudge the sight of Harry Enfield on my television, he was essentially just doing the same Prince Charles impression I was doing 25 years ago. OK, there was quite a good off-hand gag about his undue influence with city planning committees, but it flew by and that was that. It was almost furtive. “C’mon Harry, get stuck into him,” you found yourself urging, but instead he just fell back on broad-stroke stuff such as plummy mumbling and an obsession with organic biscuits. It was a shame. You could imagine Prince Charles chuckling along. It was Royal Variety Show stuff.
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What saved The Windsors from being unsalvageably rubbish were its moments of absurdity. So another running gag was that the Middletons were in fact a “Gypsy” family, and that Kate had an obsession with accruing copper wiring and lucky heather. “You really think you’re it, don’t you? But I remember when you were fighting rottweilers in the Morrisons car park,” Pippa sneers at her. “So do I,” she replies, “246 fights, 246 knockouts.” Later, in an attempt to upstage Kate during a royal visit to the north, the Duchess of Cornwall arrives with a car boot full of chip butties, puts a ferret down her trousers and then gets a Leeds United tattoo on her forearm. It was funny. But had nothing to do with the royals. Until we’re ready to think about a republic, I don’t think any decent comedy will.
Over on BBC One the second series of In the Club started, Kay Mellor’s soapy show about the trials and tribulations of women negotiating new parenthood. It began with a newborn being found in some maternity unit toilets and ended with 16-year-old Rosie giving birth in a broken council flat lift. Babies shooting out all over the place. You never knew when one was going to pop out, screaming, gunky and ready to be loved. Did you know that make-up artists sometimes use cream cheese and strawberry jam to give television babies that “just born” look? Well they do. Which is why I struggle to watch stuff like this without getting hunger pangs.
“Make-up artists use cream cheese and jam to give TV babies that ‘just-born’ look
Anyway, apart from that it was fine. Actually, it was good. It was crisp and heartfelt and if it got a bit mawkish at times, well, it’s about babies so what are you going to do? Perhaps it was a bit of a busman’s holiday for anyone who has recently been through the whole sordid/magical process, but I do have a soft spot for Mellor, who writes everyday Yorkshire- women as well as anyone. She’s always on their side without ever being too sentimental about them, which is just as well because she doesn’t half run them through the wringer. Ex-lesbian Kim had a confrontation with her former lover at a christening, while the girl acting as surrogate for two gay men to clear her debts had “THIS WILL NOT END WELL” written all over her. Jasmin was told there were complications with her unborn twins plus there was a fair bit of stuff about postpartum loss of libido, whatever that is. Imagine Alan Bennett editing the parenting issue of Take a Break magazine and you’re not far off.
And the dads? They all looked like catalogue models, which I have to say was a bit unrealistic. But they made up for it by spending most of the episode yawning and saying “sorry”. You’ll struggle to find performances more true to life.
Hugo Rifkind is away