Family Jewels

By GeraldClarke

Royal Heritage

When Shakespeare called England "this royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle," he was merely stating the facts. For more than 900 years British monarchs have bought, begged, borrowed and stolen enough treasure to sink the island: castles, palaces, crowns and jewels, fabulous bric-a-brac, artistic masterpieces beyond prodigality.

Much of the collection has never been shown publicly. Royal Heritage, which starts this week on PBS, was prepared by the BBC as its contribution to Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee last year. The Queen and several members of her family were persuaded to appear on camera and narrate generous portions of the series, with Sir Huw Wheldon, the former director of BBC television, doing the rest. Michael Gill, who produced such outstanding series as Civilisation and America, was in overall charge of the project.

The credits are interesting only because they show that the best people, working with priceless material, can make mistakes, and Royal Heritage is more often than not a royal bore. The art work is generally not shown to advantage, Wheldon is a lackluster narrator, and the phalanx of royals should have been marched by in double step instead of lingering for a chat.

Showing off the imperial state crown, the Queen bears an uncanny resemblance to Mrs. Earbore, Lily Tomlin's Tasteful Lady from Grosse Pointe. Describing George Ill's microscope, Prince Charles sounds disturbingly like his favorite King, old George himself. "It has all sorts of interesting little drawers in it, one of which has the original slides," he says, managing to be both cute and condescending at the same time. "I'm told that the things that are inside are 18th century fleas." Then, picking up a slide, he adds, "There's one very big one here--horrible-looking thing!"

Only the 77-year-old Queen Mother, warm, charming and irrepressibly vivacious, holds up the royal side. After the German bombing of Buckingham Palace, she remarks, "the garden was inundated"-- her voice drops to a scandalized whisper--"with rats!"

Often the series succeeds despite itself. The great Whig country houses have never looked grander, and it is almost worth the wait to see the enormous chair on which Edward VII weighed his celebrated guests at Sandringham. His great delight was to weigh them again when they left, after his seven-course lunches and twelve-course dinners, and see how many pounds he had put on them. The good moments aside, Royal Heritage is a well-meaning failure, proof that the British, who usually do these things so well, can, on occasion, also stumble and fall.

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