I found that episode a bit jarring as the famine plot was presented very seriously throughout but it was interspersed with a B-story about Albert getting a new toilet installed in the palace, which was clearly an attempt at comedy. The tonal juxtaposition was too great for the whole to feel coherent.
Essentially, Queen Victoria was aware about how the Irish were suffering but it was such a political hot button due to immense racism against the Irish that she couldn't do anything about it.
Which...is not what happened.
At all.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
Since the beginning, to enjoy this show I had to pretend it's a costume drama only loosely based on historical events.
However, the attempt to make the protagonist sympathetic in every case made her less interesting, in the long run. I found the third season really boring, besides historically inaccurate. It's a pity because I kinda liked the first two seasons.
The chronology of the series was a bit confusing all the way through - Dash lives eight years longer than he should, Harriet dies about a decade too early, the cholera outbreak happening in 1849 instead of 1854 etc.
What really spoils it for me, though, is the subplots.
The Skerrett-Francatelli subplot is... okay. It's what you'd expect from these kinds of costume dramas, the main problem being that it ends rather abruptly when she dies.
The Paget-Drummond is a little more engaging and could have gone in an interesting direction, except that Drummond is destined to die at the end of the season, which means that the story can't continue, not to mention its rather counterproductive social signalling. It just highlights to me the absurdity of inventing a relationship between two men who in real life weren't gay, weren't remotely the same age and possibly never even met each other.
Then in series 3 we have the Duke & Duchess of Monmouth. They're abysmally dull all the way through and every scene with them just feels like Padding. What's more, it falls into the common costume drama problem of interspersing storylines that should be moving at very different speeds - the Crystal Palace goes from an empty patch of land to fully constructed before Victoria realises that one of her ladies-in-waiting isn't showing up for work.
Edited by TommyR01D on Sep 11th 2021 at 5:50:43 AM

Gloriana! Hallelujah!
This is the thread for Victoria, staring Jenna Coleman as the titular queen and Tom Hughes as her consort Albert.
The first series aired in the autumn of 2016, the second in the autumn of 2017, the third in the spring of 2019 and the fourth... well, we're still waiting.
ITV have said there are "no plans presently" to film any more material, which some are taking as a euphemism for the program being quietly cancelled.[1]
[2]
Edited by TommyR01D on Sep 10th 2021 at 5:55:20 AM