TV review: Queen Victoria's Children

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/jan/01/tv-review-queen-victorias-children

Version 0 of 1.

I don't know why no one has ever done a book called something like Bringing Up Your Kid The Way Victoria'n'Albert Did. Yes, I think that works as a title, quite snappy. I'm going to be rich!

I – we – had one fairly recently, a kid. And we got a couple of those how-to-do-it books. Pah! A lot of modern, wishy-washy nonsense if you ask me, the main problem being that they start from the ridiculous premise that a child is some kind of human being. Having now seen the first episode of this fascinating three-part parenting programme, Queen Victoria's Children (BBC2), I'm convinced that this is the way forward (even if it may look like backwards). My book will take a while. In the meantime, I – we – will adopt the methods employed by the Queen and her Consort. Wipe the slate clean in 2013! More snappiness!

Actually that – clean slates – is how V'n'A saw their children. To be filled in by their parents. Well, by him – she wasn't that bothered or interested, to begin with. And so it shall be for us. My girlfriend – who shares not just the neediness, the short temper and the domineering character of England's longest reigning monarch, but also her name – shall see our child no more than twice a day. She will be repulsed by his frog-like body, and will come to be bitterly disappointed by him. Oh well. The good news though is that she will be besotted by me, idolising both my mind and my body. I will go commando in tight white cashmere pantaloons set off by knee-high black boots, and this will greatly excite her. So ardently will she worship me that she will want our child to be fashioned in my image.

This will be largely left to me. I may rechristen him Bertie, after the then Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). I will teach him to hunt butterflies and to grow vegetables in our back garden. I will build him a Swiss-style chalet and teach him to cook. If he lies I will beat him. I will teach him mathematics and to play the piano, and if he gets a sum or a note wrong I will beat him some more. And he will get many sums wrong and many notes wrong because he will be abnormally backward, so I will beat him and beat him and beat him. Not because I dislike or resent him, as his mother does, but because I love him and want to do the right thing by him, as well as to be seen by other people to be doing the right thing.

And he will grow up to be not just weak of mind, but of body, and especially of will. He will have tantrums, and liaisons with disreputable Irish ladies, bringing shame on our family …

OK, some of it may need fine-tuning. And reworking for the 21st century. To be honest, I'm pretty sure there's not room for a Swiss chalet in the back garden, this not being Osborne House. Not many butterflies either. And it may have to be the ukulele.

Of course there are a few other differences, too. By the time he was my age, Prince Albert had had not just the one kid, but nine. Plus he was dead. Leaving the offspring to do battle with you-know-who. And it was a proper conflict by all accounts, to be explored in parts two and three. Bring it on, can't wait.

There's not a massive amount to go on, visually, to fill three hours of television – a Landseer painting to pan slowly over, a few very early family photos, a wander round the grounds of Osborne House. There is a little light reconstruction, but it's very unobtrusive, props – nine pairs of boots lined up in ascending size, a candle, billiard cue on ball etc – more than people. That's my kind of reconstruction, the sort you hardly notice, not the sort you laugh at.

And they have certainly gathered their experts together. So many experts, at least a dozen – royal historians and biographers, Prof This and Dr That from Oxford and Cambridge, this chap with his expert knowledge of obscene Victorian lampoonery (so rude!). Proper experts, too, who know stuff, not just rent-a-gobs. I'm being nice about them because they may be useful, for the book.

I'll deal with Attenborough (yeah, watch it Sir David) tomorrow for his BBC Africa programme, which goes out tonight. But there's one lovely moment here in David Attenborough's Galapagos (Sky1) with one of those magnificent massive tortoises. Attenborough follows it, not so fast of course, walking with a similar, steady, purposeful gait. Two giants, wise, timeless, important, one behind the other.