Marie Antoinette, season one

I was only put onto this when its second season began showing on the BBC. If historical accuracy is what you're after then this series is not for you, but I get the strong impression that it is not trying to be - there are enough details there as if to say 'we could have been more accurate if we had wanted to.'

Set almost entirely among the highest echelons of the French and Austrian courts of the late 18th century, the characters nevertheless speak and interact in a very modern way, with even the supposed extreme formality of the French court at Versailles seeming laughably informal to those of us who have watched, say, Wolf (...pause for 20 seconds while Mark Rylance takes off and then puts back on his hat...) Hall.

The main character throughout is Marie Antoinette (hence the title, but I suppose they couldn't exactly call it Versailles since there was a different series with that name made between 2015 and 2018), played by Emilia Schüle - a sort of female Matt Smith, I could imagine her playing the Doctor much more easily than I could imagine someone like, say, Billie Piper in the part. The series takes us from her marriage to the heir to the throne of France, the future king Louis xvi who famously lost his head, to the birth of their first son which made the marriage secure.

Louis here is an interesting character because he is so obviously being written and played as what we would now recognise as neurodivergent, what with his extreme social awkwardness. This is possibly the main reason why I cannot decide if the modernisation of the characters is something forced upon the makers of the series as a way of making it accessible (more than just the usual things we take for granted in historical dramas, such as the way they all speak 21st century English instead of 18th century French), or if this was a purposeful stylistic choice to make the main protagonists seem like 21st century people forced to live in the past.

The series tries its hardest to make us feel sympathy for Louis and Marie Antoinette by carefully never showing us how the common people of France lived at that time showing us how they were trapped in their roles as heir to the throne, close to power but  essentially powerless, their everyday actions dictated to them by court ritual and etiquette, and surounded by the rest of the French royal family, most of whom hated them.

At the beginning of the series the king of France is Louis xv, magnificently (and scene-stealingly) played by James "Mark Antony" Purefoy (more like Purrfoy) as an old letch. His mistress, Madame du Barry, is the main antagonist to Marie Antoinette for the first half of the season, who is eventually defeated by means of the old king dying. The second half of the series then shifts to being about Louis and Marie Antoinette adapting to their new roles as king and queen.

Louis now has power but his wife still has almost none, unless and until she can give birth to a male heir (the French never allowed women to be monarchs so a daughter wasn't good enough), and she remains surrounded by enemies since anyone at the court who wants to end the French alliance with Austria wants to get rid of the king's Austrian wife. Marie Antoinette doesn't do herself any favours here since her behaviour, rebelling against the constraints placed upon her and spending lavishly on her favourites, gives her enemies plenty of ammunition to use against her. And foreshadows her eventual fate.

Filming at the actual palace of Versailles makes the series look fantastic, so the authentic appearance of the locations (and interior sets and costumes, to be fair, although this is par for the course when it comes to costume dramas) contrasts with the purposefully anachronistic characters inhabiting them to create a distictive take on the story of the period.

At the time of writing this I haven't watched the second season yet (it is all up on the BBC iPlayer already, though it won't finish being broadcast until near the end of June) so I don't know how far that will take us towards the revolution. It will be interesting to see how long the series can maintain viewer sympathy in Marie Antoinette, or if it even tries to.