VERSAILLES: Wednesday 15th February, BBC2, 9pm
Thereâs always a dangerous line to tread between making history accessible and recklessly abandoning any semblance of historical accuracy (The Tudors, take note), but BBC Twoâs Versailles series strikes the perfect balance between the âdocuâ and âdramaâ of its genre.
The three-part series covers the reigns of the authoritative, theatrical, and really rather randy âsun-kingâ? Louis XIV, who ordered the construction of the palace at Versailles (on a swamp, riddled with mosquitoes), the melancholy and ultimately despised Louis XV, and the tentative Louis XVI, who was finished off by bread-craving revolutionaries. History is repeating itself on BBC Two, as this was aired for the first time in 2009, yet the decadent period of the Bourbon dynasty clearly has enduring appeal, and its return is very welcome.
The historians, novelists and biographers providing the commentary, many of whom are improbably glamorous, take their subjects passionately and always with a wry smirk. Whether itâs the inevitable pantomime romp elements â lots of ruffled-shirted sexing and majestic lusting â or pressing political incidents, such as, yâknow, an epoch-defining revolution, the academics strike the right tone. Observations include âpowerâs a great aphrodisiacâ?, and the slightly breathless âno one did it like Louisâ?; littering their historical analyses with light-hearted nuances.
The focus on theatricality and scenery makes this series less sophisticated than other history programmes recently offered by the BBC. Its format restricts it from achieving as cerebral a historical evaluation as Professor Robert Bartlettâs excellent series on the Normans of August 2010, or the dynamic revision of the Crusades by Dr Thomas Asbridge aired earlier this month.
Yet unlike the BBCâs usual forays into the past, the narrative is compiled using intimate records and memoirs, and the detail these sources provide is the backbone of the series.
We learn that in order to realise Louis XIVâs dream of Versailles, mature trees had to be uprooted and brought in from other French provinces, due to the poor-quality land; that a high death-rate among the palace builders caused an angry mother to spit at the king, and that a gravely limited water supply forced servants to rush and turn the fountains on as the king strolled through his gardens, and then immediately shut them off when he had returned to his bed-chamber (where he âhonouredâ? his mistress three times a day, allegedly).
Also dug up from the archives is Louis XVâs request that his courtiers do his would-be assassin âno harmâ?, that his true love and best friend, Madame de Pompadour, said she would ârather dieâ? than pleasure the king sexually, and rather too graphic an explanation of why Louis XVI was unable to consummate his marriage to Marie Antoinette for seven years. I wonât spoil it.
The seriesâ jocular nature is an asset, drawing us into the ostentation and intrigue of life at Versailles, all the way from Louis XIV languorously kissing his mistressâ mosquito bites better, to crowds of peasants armed with pitch-forks and Enlightenment ideals in 1789.
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