Lavish BBC drama Versailles was utter ‘bowwocks’
Expensive BBC drama is a bit of a disaster... offering power, intrigue and sex but just delivering madness
SOMETIMES the Springwatch innuendo can feel a little forced and out of place.
At other times, though, it tees you up just perfectly for the next hour of television.
Like on Wednesday night, for instance, just before 9pm, when Michaela Strachan asked: “How are the tits getting on?”
Well stick around, Michaela, and you’ll discover they’re getting on just fine.
The friskiest pair are jiving around on top of King Louis XIV and they’re attached to some wide-eyed bird listed as “Nymph” in the credits.
The opening scene from BBC2’s lavishly bonkers new historical drama Versailles, which I’d marked down as “special” from the moment I sent my first preview tape request to the Beeb and was met with deafening silence.
So I sent another and was met with more silence, until a couple of hours before broadcast an apologetic response claimed there were: “No previews available.”
That was their story, anyway.
Just how truly “special” Versailles actually was, though, became clear in its first ten minutes which featured many portents of doom, great p***ing storm clouds, the King’s brother getting noshed off by an American bloke, who was about 100 years ahead of history and his Highness shuddering to a climax with the immortal words: “Louis the Great has arrived.”
I’ll say he has.
After 12 minutes of madness, though, something even weirder happened.
The opening credits started.
More useful than you’d think, as up until then I’d been assuming the Airplane gang were responsible for all those parts of the script that hadn’t been penned by the late great Sid Waddell.
“Anointed by God, blessed by the sun.
“But you do not possess what really matters . . . THE POWER!”
A lot of the script was also route one cliche, of course — “We must leave for Paris at once” — but occasionally also felt as if it was about to burst into a Doris Day song.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?
“You could’ve been killed.”
“Perhaps.” “Perhaps?”
Per-haaaaps.
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You could stick that sort of line in Dame Helen Mirren’s gob and it still wouldn’t sing, but Versailles really has assembled a rum old bunch of actors and characters to complete the disaster.
For starters there’s King Louis himself, as played by George Blagden, who’s got a bit of the Derren Browns about him and the mind of a randy Diarmuid Gavin (all lady gardens and water features).
Significant others include several of his bonkubines, some CGI wolves, a dreadlocked dwarf, who shoved his or her head up the Queen’s under- garments, early doors, and a feminist doctor, who I’d have assumed was included at the Beeb’s insistence if I didn’t know this glorious calamity was actually a French/Canadian production.
It cost them £21million to make as well and has got a few other critics hot under the collar with moral outrage and indignation.
There was never a chance I’d join in, obviously, as I was laughing from the very start of Versailles right up to the final scene when the queen gave birth with a howl of agony and a squeak of embarrassment.
“The problem is not the sex, Sire . . . it’s the colour.”
Awks.
If that didn’t fulfil all your comedy needs, though, BBC2 then shoved on two historians to try to explain the inexplicable and one of them, Kate Williams, had some of the softest consonants on telly.
“Power, intwigue, gwamour and quite a wot of bedwoom action.”
To which I would add only one further word on Versailles.
Bowwocks.
Flack in the old routine
PANIC grips the five new female Love Island contestants as Caroline Flack appears through the villa’s glass doors and they immediately assume she’s number six.
“Is this s**t really happening?” asks one.
Yes it is, but relax.
It’s not the seniors’ event.
It’s the 18-30 version of the ITV2 show, incorporating The End Of Humanity: Part II, which dear old Caroline kicked off by explaining: “Nothing is simple on Love Island.”
A huge lie. Everything is simple here and the format’s so bovine it practically s**ts in a field and goes: “Mooo!”
Six couples attempt to hump their way to 50 grand.
Still, if they are going to breed Britain into oblivion, ITV2’s certainly picked the right blokes for the job.
There’ll be a full rundown of them over the next five weeks but the most entertainingly dense so far are “Gift of the Gab” Nathan, who spent the first week apologising for calling Cara “frigid”, Titanic Tom, from South Wales, who claims he hasn’t got enough fingers to count his number of one-night stands (a bare minimum of 12, then) and Terry, who set out his alpha- male credentials in the spelling bee.
“Sphincter? F.Z.I.N.K.T.A. Is that an a**ehole?”
A prize one, Tel. (ITV2, tonight, 9pm.)
Silence, thank Evans!
BLISSFUL silence as Chris Evans was wheeled into the Top Gear studio by Matt LeBlanc, who made an unnecessary apology for the fact his co-host was “heavily sedated”.
It was down to excitement, apparently, and probably the safest way of telling him the viewing figures.
Either way, the relief was only temporary and he was screaming his moobs off minutes later, first test-driving a McLaren sports car and then careering up a 2,874-metre mountain in South Africa with LeBlanc, Eddie Jordan and some celebrity pals (Seasick Steve and Carsick Chris).
Initial plan was, I thought, to find the only man on the planet who couldn’t hear him shout “HOW GREAT WAS THAT?” on last week’s show, but it actually turned out to be one of those road films that served a dual purpose.
Not only did the production team remind us that Top Gear, for all its faults, remains the most beautifully shot programme on TV, Matt LeBlanc reminded Eddie Jordan about an obvious precaution you can take if you’re driving an SUV off-road.
“There is a button in there.
“Can you remember to push the button?”
’Cos if you don’t, the canned laughter stops.
And that can’t happen.
Cheeky Nando's Eamon?
THIS Morning, Eamonn Holmes: “When I go into Nando’s in Walton-on-Thames, I always think there’s something missing.”
Coleslaw, chips, sweet-potato wedges, garlic bread, olives, creamy mash, corn on the cob, peri-peri nuts, red-pepper dip, wing roulette, half a chicken . . . the other half of the chicken.
And then a main course.
Lookalikes
THIS week’s £69 winner is BGT singer Jasmine Elcock and Hero Girl from The Polar Express.
Sent in first by Sianna Stodd, of Leicester.
Runner-up: Norman Wisdom and Brooklyn Beckham.
TV name of the week
Versailles’ director of photography – Pierre-Yves Bastard.
Which I’d like to think works the same way as Channel 5’s mid- morning show host Matthew Wright, tosser
TV Gold
- Vice News’s Jeremy Corbyn documentary (though I could’ve done with another half hour).
- Alan Shearer’s Euro ‘96 documenatry.
- The One Show’s Alex Jones alerting astronaut Buzz Aldrin to Britain’s speed cameras: “A couple of years ago I got flashed twice in one journey.”
- And BBC1 allowing us to relive the most beautiful and brilliant moment in sporting history, via the medium of a Muhammad Ali combination and Harry Carpenter: “He’s got him! And I don’t think Foreman’s going to beat the count. He’s out! Oh my God, he’s won the title back at 32.”
GREAT Sporting Insights
Kirsty Gallacher: “You’re up against Ronaldinho, Edgar Davids, Cafu, to name only a couple.”
Mike Atherton: “Sri Lanka have been unfathomable. Or fathomable, in a bad way.”
And Paul Merson: “I honestly don’t know what West Brom fans want. Not a clue. Probably a cup win.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray).
Random TV irritations
- EastEnders’ Steven Beale forgetting he’s gay. Versailles’ end credits going on longer than the Bordeaux phone directory.
- Piers Morgan sledgehammering all the humour out of Ben Shephard’s Soccer Aid sending off.
- Love Island’s Scottish narrator Iain Stirling attributing “My love is like a red, red rose” to Shakespeare rather than Robert Burns. And the increasingly biased Have I Got News For You treating MP Jess
- Phillips like she was visiting royalty rather than another self- regarding mediocrity who could no more run the nation’s finances than she could anchor Jamaica’s men to gold in the Olympics’ 4x100 metre relay. Though, just for s**ts and giggles, I wouldn’t mind seeing her trying one of those.
WORST attempt to clamp an agenda and a Sir Galahad complex on to a tribute?
BBC Sport’s England v Serbia commentator Jonathan Pearce: “Muhammad Ali, a great champion of women’s sport.
He’d have appreciated the investment, development and improvement in England’s women’s football team over the last three years.”
He’d have talked of little else, Jonathan.
Rylan Clark’s chat show masterclass (Part 27)
“Your new single, Everybody Needs Love.
“What’s it about?”
Zak Abel: “Everyone needs love.”
