However, Our Queen will not necessarily be the first of its kind when it shows at 8pm this evening on ITV. In fact, Our Queen will be another on the admittedly limited list of documentaries that have tried and often succeded in offering the public a candid glimpse of their Monarch and her court.
In 1969, a documentary called Royal Family was broadcast as part of an attempt by the Royal Household to increase public knowledge and therefore favour of the Queen. It was a success! People saw the Royal Family as they’d never seen them before; at home, relaxed and surprisingly… normal.
But that was its downfall. Showing the Monarchy as ‘normal’. As Walter Bagehot, the famous Victorian constitutionalist would’ve said, the Monarchy relies on its magic being preserved to work.
A few years later, the documentary was completely withdrawn from the public eye by The Queen and has never been seen since. Even online it’s impossible to find (trust us; we’ve been looking for years).
Similarly in 1992 for the 40th anniversary of The Queen’s accession another documentary, this time called ‘Elizabeth R’ was broadcast. Again, although the documentary was great at offering the public an insight into the Royal Court; it did so in a way that The Queen later considered too personal, and this documentary was withdrawn also.
Unlike Royal Family this documentary hasn’t totally disappeared from public grasp and in fact we have found a copy on YouTube (click here to see that).
Today, the question is, will this candid look into The Queen’s court in 2012 prove to be equally ‘damaging’ to the Monarchy’s mystery… Well, probably not it seems.
Times are changing and this evening, we’re likely to see, yes an in depth look into life in the Royal Household (possibly like we’ve never seen before), and yes it probably will be controversial to some people (royal documentaries always are) but in this day and age; it won’t be too far.