★★☆☆☆
ITV’s recent tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, modulated through the memories of her sons, was tasteful propaganda for her.
Last night’s PBS/Channel 4 documentary was also propaganda on her behalf, but not tasteful. This is not to say that the princess’s shade would be outraged. If her 1995 Panorama interview was designed to slay Prince Charles’s reputation, this programme featuring her previously unbroadcast complaints would have successfully buried it had the events it rehashed not happened a rather long time ago.
Even viewers who enjoyed much of the salacious detail of Kevin Sim’s long film may have balked at two gratuitous titbits. In the first Diana, speaking to Peter Settelen, her voice coach, in preparation for Panorama, calculated the frequency of her and her husband’s love-making (not so frequent). In the second, Ken Wharfe, her personal protection officer, reported a confrontation between her and Camilla Parker Bowles. The latter supposedly said that it was “all right” for Diana since she had two “wonderful boys”. Since Camilla has a daughter and a son, the inclusion of this baffling remark felt like the deliberate infliction of collateral damage on her family.
Some of Diana’s other takedowns of the Prince of Wales sounded less devastating upon reflection. He was “all over her” like “a rash” in their first romantic encounter. Really? If he was so inept, how then after 13 assignations had she managed to fall in love with him? Charles may have wondered in a television interview before their marriage what “in love” was. She sounded clueless too.
Since most of us have long since got the gist of what went wrong with the marriage, the greatest insight from this programme was the proof that she had been coached to the turrets for her Panorama sensation. Judicious phrases such as “destiny and circumstance” came trippingly off her tongue because they had been programmed. Settelen had pushed her to take the kamikaze option: “If you feel strongly about a point, make it strongly.”
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The programme stretched itself to 110 minutes by including plenty of words from others too: Wharfe; Patrick Jephson, her private secretary; her pal James Colthurst and Anne Allan, her ballet teacher. Sim seemed to be yearning for the accolade “definitive”. Rather than concede it was telling one half of the story, the film presented itself in the most portentous manner as if it were history itself.
Its narrative voice (Iain Glen’s) was ghastly, full of guff. The Cinderella wedding carriage was, it sternly pointed out, “a coach for real kings and queens whose ancestors reached back a thousand years to the beginning of the nation”. (Actually, the coach was built in 1881.) While patronising the nation for falling for a fairytale, it phrased itself as one: “A kind of darkness had fallen on the green and pleasant land. There is division in the ruling House of Windsor . . .”
The film concluded with an extract from Swan Lake interlarded with best-of clips from the marriage. Diana: In Her Own Words was pretentious and trashy. But within it wronged Diana, in her sweetness and confusion, lived again. If you could forgive the attendant ickiness, that apparition was worth gazing upon.
Biographers condemn ‘hostile’ show
Viewers were divided over last night’s screening of tapes in which Diana, Princess of Wales, spoke candidly about her private life.
They said the footage would rake up hysteria and bad feeling 20 years after her death, and that the decision to broadcast the tapes was malicious.
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The tapes, filmed by Peter Settelen, the princess’s voice coach, were due to be broadcast ten years ago but were pulled by the BBC after complaints.
Hugo Vickers, a royal biographer, strongly criticised the decision to include the tapes in Diana: In Her Own Words, shown last night on Channel 4.
He described the programme as in “very poor taste and unhelpful”, adding: “They seem to be trying to damage everybody, it’s quite a hostile programme. It’s obviously very slanted against Prince Charles and Camilla.
“If alive, she would be allowed to make the decision [to challenge it] and I don’t agree with it being done.”
Penny Junor, another royal biographer, said the programme was “incredibly mawkish” and that there was no justification for screening the tapes. “In my view this does not look like a tool to teach Diana,” she said. “It looks like a guy who’s got a very vulnerable young woman in the room with him.
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“It’s a really nasty piece of programming and I think it will cause a great deal of upset . . . This was a train smash of a marriage but two people were in that marriage and we have only heard from one of them.”
Viewers were more divided. One said on Twitter: “Wasn’t sure whether it should be shown, now I’m watching it I’m absolutely certain it should be aired, Diana finally speaks.”
Mr Settelen declined to be interviewed.