Marie Antoinette, BBC2 review — a commodity in search of compassion

If Meghan and Harry have found sympathy rather hard to come by, what hope is there for Marie Antoinette?

A new Franco-British period drama seeks to elicit some compassion, and even respect, for someone whose name has become a byword for hard-hearted elitism. Shot through a feminist perspective, the series is intended as a response to what the series creator Deborah Davis has called the “misogynistic propaganda campaign” against the last queen of France before the revolution. Predictably, the show has already been decried in some quarters for sacrificing historical accuracy in the name of a “woke” agenda.

In truth, Marie Antoinette seems to be less of a historical figure than a demi-mythological one, her life reduced to a cautionary tale and a misattributed quotation. So while the show may take some creative licence and imaginative leaps, it does so in the hope of reclaiming her humanity and giving texture and agency to a woman who was not only a notorious materialist, but was treated as a commodity herself.

The series begins with the 14-year-old archduchess of Austria (Emilia Schüle) being sent to France as a diplomatic offering. Still a child herself, she’s expected (or rather ordered) to marry the uncouth young dauphin, Louis (Louis Cunningham) and deliver an heir tout de suite in order to secure an alliance between the Bourbon and Habsburg dynasties.

The relentless, stifling scrutiny that “Toinette” is placed under from the moment she arrives at Versailles is keenly transmitted in the first episode (of eight), which plays out like a queasy psychological horror dressed up as a sumptuous costume drama. In this palace that is made to feel at once grand and carceral, prying eyes stare from every corner while mockery and prurient gossip reverberate through the halls.

Schüle does well to capture the terror and the callowness of the young princess as she contends not only with a hostile new environment but with an infantile husband who is ossified by his own fear of her. But as the show goes on she also demonstrates an emerging steely resolve, especially in her battle for influence at court with Madame du Barry (Gaia Weiss), the courtesan-turned-lover of the lecherous Louis XV (James Purefoy).

Although the show is eager to stress how the bedroom serves as a locus of power for these vast empires, its depiction of the world outside Versailles is cursory and overly reliant on exposition. In fact, despite Davis’s credentials as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Favourite, the dialogue is often a little stilted, even as it draws on a more contemporary vernacular. Pacing, too, becomes an issue after the intense opener.

For all the fastidious details of the ambitious production, Marie Antoinette can at times feel like an indulgent serving of cake, when what we crave is a bit more of the bread-and-butter of storytelling.

★★★☆☆

Begins on BBC2 on December 29 at 9pm. New episodes air weekly and are available to stream on BBC iPlayer