The Princess (Sky Documentaries), a feature-length biography of Diana, Princess of Wales directed by Ed Perkins, is made up entirely of contemporary archive footage. We are immersed dizzily in the grainy, boxy 1980s and 90s, with no talking heads, captions or scripted narrator to steady our thoughts. But via his choice of clips, Perkins is, of course, telling us the story he wants to tell. What he patches together is a carnival of grotesquery in which the media, the public and the royal family all look as sordid and twisted as each other.
Doom has already gathered when Diana and Prince Charles give their first interviews after becoming engaged, Diana blinking into the middle distance as the pair fail to answer any questions designed to provoke a relatable insight into their relationship. Their only shared interest seems to be an exhausted horror at press harassment. On that topic, we are soon watching a man on a TV debate show expertly asserting that this situation is about to improve: “I think we’re going to see a change in the attitude of the press. I think that now she’s palpably one of the royal family, all this telephoto lens business will stop.”
