Instead of balls at Balmoral, we got bombardiers blue with cold. Instead of court finery, a tattered Union flag.
British troops had retreated from Afghanistan, and were trying to escape through the Khyber Pass in winter.
In this drama, Queen Victoria, who was in confinement after the birth of her first child, knew nothing about this.
In the aftermath of the Afghan campaign, in which 4,500 British soldiers were massacred, press and parliament demanded to know what we’d even been doing in there in the first place.
But last night, most of the anger was reserved for Prince Albert, and most of it came from his wife.
You could see the first twitches of anxiety on the Consort’s face when he found his Queen up late, going through the red official boxes.
“I dealt with them this morning,” he said, sniffily, like a husband who spots his wife giving the kitchen work surfaces a second wipe.
As Victoria took the reins again following chidbirth, it all came out, not just the Afghan disaster, but all the other stuff Albert had been taking care of.
Things got messy, Victoria chucked a hairbrush, Albert went to sleep in the spare wing.
Victoria said she was sick of seeing him in a huddle with Prime Minster, Sir Robert Peel.
“He was most complimentary about my helmet designs,” retorted Albert.
Later, Victoria decided to attend the relaunch of the rebuilt HMS Trafalgar.
Some thought the aftermath of a massacre was a bad time to celebrate a new warship. Albert said he was going to a meeting about London’s sewers instead.
Queen Victoria said this was no time to be bothering about plumbing.
What with the hairbrushes and helmets and sewers, the comedy slightly overshadowed the poor souls in the Khyber Pass, not to mention the story’s real point – Victoria’s continuing struggle for power.
It also upstaged the person obviously signed up to do the funnies for this season, the Duchess of Buccleuch.
Diana Rigg, every bit as withering as Maggie Smith’s Downton dowager, did her best though, dismissing the new baby’s smiles as wind, forcing the Saxe-Coburg relations to eat cockaleekie soup and wiping dust off the picture frames.
We’re all set, clearly, for an autumn of laughs. Let’s hope it’s not light on drama.
Daily Express :: TV and Radio Feed
