Product: Victoria & Albert: A Royal Love Affair [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 4.0
Actors needed deportment lessons
I watch historical TV series primarily for the sumptuous sets and costumes (this is not the place to seriously study history). "Victorian & Albert" has gorgeous sets and costumes, but I really wish they'd given the actors some lessons in period movement. In particular the one who played Queen Victoria. The real queen never had a tiny waist, hollow cheekbones, and prominent shoulder blades--even at 18. But at least it's understandable that the producers wanted her to conform to a modern ideal of beauty. The actress's movements, however, are atrocious-and she's never still. She has a heavy (audible!) tramping walk, she wriggles her arms, she hunches and shrugs her shoulders, she has a million little pouts and grimaces. And on top of it all there's her prolonged, husky giggle. Put her back in "Sex & the City," or wherever she came from, and back in a bathing suit, or whatever she's used to wearing.