Emilia Schüle and Louis Cunningham as the Dauphine and Dauphin
(Picture: BBC / Capa Drama / Banijay Studios France / Les Gens / Canal+ / Caroline Dubois)An eight-part Canal+ and BBC period drama about the iconic French queen Marie Antoinette, filmed at the Palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau was always going to set expectations high. Then when the production has caused uproar for being obscene and/or feminist, with a backlash from some historians to boot, this anticipation was only going to reach trembling point.
But the new series, Marie Antoinette, never reaches its scandalous potential. There’s a tremendous gap between all the hyped chatter and the reality of this slightly fusty series, which perhaps unfairly sets the new show up to be an inevitably disappointing watch.
The series, which focuses on the first decade or so after Marie Antoinette arrives in France (which is also the least interesting part of her life), certainly takes a while to get going – the first few episodes are literally boring; exquisite sets, hair, make-up and costumes can only take you so far.
At the same time, German actor Emilia Schüle fizzes with youthful charm as the quietly resolute Austrian Archduchess, who was sent to France to become the Dauphine at 14 years old. Louis Cunningham gets the tone right as the unimaginative and shy Louis XVI (some historians have taken issue with one of his sex-related scenes, but that’s hardly Cunningham’s fault) and over the series, the duo successfully create the kind of awkward fondness that you can only imagine might have eventually developed between the two adolescents from different countries so publicly thrust together. As they remain childless, and the court’s sharks start circling, their story, with its rising stakes, becomes increasingly compelling.
But it’s hard to work out why this retread has been described as a feminist reimagining of the Marie Antoinette story. We can agree that her life of extravagance and scandal can be read more or less sympathetically, and it’s true that history has not always looked kindly upon the young Queen. But recent representations (such as Sophia Coppola’s stylish 2006 film) have shown her to have more agency (which of course also makes her more culpable). Though her success in outflanking her critics, learning to navigate a vicious royal court and producing four heirs is not utterly derided here, it doesn’t exactly make her Gloria Steinem.
Similarly, many will be tuning in because the show has been penned by one of the two writers of The Favourite – those viewers are likely to be disappointed. Judging by this more earnest script, it seems much more likely that it was The Favourite’s second writer, Tony McNamara (who went on to create Hulu’s riotous The Great), rather than Deborah Davis, who brought the perfectly pitched spiky black humour to the film writer’s room: there’s none of that here.
Marie Antoinette apparently whipped up a frenzied response in some French quarters after it debuted there at the end of October, being described as vulgar and unhistorical (a dubious necessity for a TV show, but there we are). There are indeed some overtly sexual scenes and conversations (including one episode where Joseph II, Marie Antoinette’s brother, travels to France to encourage the duo to get it on), plus there’s a suggestion that Louis XV (James Purefoy) made a move on his son’s young wife, and a sequence where his lover Madame du Barry (Gaia Weiss) teaches her how to seduce. None of these scenes are worth a hissy fit.
Ultimately, this is a deeply old-fashioned production. It has two male directors, Pete Travis and Geoffrey Enthoven, which is in keeping with tradition – of the 23 films since 1923 that have somehow featured Marie Antoinette, only one has been directed by a woman – and there is also a dogged scarcity of people of colour among the cast, indicating that the Bridgerton-effect has yet to infiltrate all corners of the historical drama world. But if you’ve an affection for an old-school period piece, you could certainly do worse.
Marie Antoinette is going to be a three-season, 24-episode series, which on the one hand means there’s time in this very slow-burner for some of these issues to work themselves out. On the other hand, whether audiences have the patience for it is an entirely different matter. For now, tune into Marie Antoinette for a grand production with some decent acting, but leave your expectations at the door.
