Vitória: A Vida de uma Rainha

I was so looking forward to watching Victoria and I have not been disappointed. Having a keen interest in English history, especially of the Royal Family, I am obsessed with this series. I has been anxiously awaiting each new episode. Costuming is perfection, and the actors are are superb. I could not think of anyone better to play Queen Victoria. If you love period drama and English history, you will be enthralled by Victoria. I wish there was more shows like this on television. A definite must for fans of this genre. The betrayal of Lord M and Victoria's relationship may be elaborated a bit, but the basis of this show is worth the watch.

Jenna Coleman's acting is worth an award. Camera work by John Lee is extraordinary (the right eye for detail), music is extremely well suited, the costumes are exquisite. It's a feast for the eye and while looking at it you just tend to forget the quibbles about it's historical mistakes.

I do hope someone else picks it up if the studio decided to cancel, tho it seems unlikely. :(

Love this show. I started watching few weeks ago and now when I finished season 3 I find out the story was not completed and that there is no season 4.

Sad.

I am enjoying the show as a period piece and not for its historical accuracy. I am not sure what the future episodes will reveal, but hopefully not Victoria as a loving devoted mother, which she was not. Reading her journals and letters, and especially letters to her adult children over the years reveals a woman who hated being pregnant, did not like babies at all, and considered one of her son's unfortunate because he was an ugly baby. She thought babies resembled frogs. She despised and was revolted by breastfeeding, which probably is not uncommon back then, and rarely spent any time with her young children and preferred to spend most of her time with Albert of whom she was devoted to and passionate about privately, but in her letters she blamed men for many of women's woes. They both desperately wanted to create a loving and warm family, which unfortunately, they failed to do for the most part. I feel the actors are doing the best they can with the script and you are never going to portray the accuracy of a period and relationships between people when you are not their to witness it. You can only go by accounts, and documents written in their hand, but that does not truly reveal who they really are either.

It starts very well. They give a nice insight into an 18yo girl, totally protected and kept from everything except her family, suddenly dropped into the position of Queen of the most powerful country on the planet. Not unexpected, but completely unprepared. The early episodes are very good. Melbourne and Peel are both very well done and the drama does what it should do, it breathes life into history.

The problems start when Albert appears. Tom Hughes is simply dreadful as Albert, completely unconvincing. Albert was an intense, prickly and stubborn man. Hughes plays him as a sulky toy boy. It is awful. But then Hughes tends to play sulky toy boys so it is hardly a surprise. A better casting would have been Daniel Brühl who played Nikki Lauda in Rush, but there it is. I suspect Hughes was included as eye candy for the ladies, and certainly as a man I found Jenna Coleman very nice to look at, so I don't begrudge them that. The difference is Coleman carried her part well, Hughes was all wrong. By contrast, his brother Earnest is excellent.

It also gets increasingly soapy after Albert arrives on the scene, culminating in a final episode that is little more than an extended advert for the 2nd series. It gets quite bad. It is known that Albert was not that keen on Victoria and accepted her proposal because it was his duty to do so. He fell in love her, very much so, but after they were married. That won't do at all for a soap (it would be OK the other way around), so he has to be besotted from the start. It's hard to see the Prince Albert we are given by Hughes falling in love with anyone except himself, so it's all very false.