These days it has become a top trend to explore the lives of British royal family. After the huge success of Netflix's The Crown, E!'s The Royals, PBS Masterpiece has brought us another great TV series based on the life of Queen Victoria.
Also read: PBS's Victoria review: Period drama tells a beautiful royal story, but falls short of The Crown
Written by Daisy Goodwin and produced by Mammoth Screen, the first episode of Victoria showed an 18-year-old young princess Alexandrina sit on the throne and become Queen Victoria (Jenna Coleman). Her mother, Duchess of Kent and Conroy stood beside her as advisor. But young Victoria wanted to be independent and did not intend to take any advice. Thus, she maintained a distance from both of them.
Alongside, her Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell) helped her to cope with the governmental work. They seemed to be quite enchanted by each other. But gossips erupted everywhere about their alleged closeness. Fearing the scandal, Lord Melbourne abandoned Victoria to her advisor, Conroy. And, using it as the golden opportunity, Conroy seized the chance to take control and undermined the Queen.
According to ITV (as the series has already been premiered on ITV last year), the episode 2 will show Victoria is devastated when Melbourne regretfully announces he is stepping down, and even more bewildered that she must ask a complete stranger, Sir Robert Peel, to form a government. Desperate, Victoria implores Melbourne to return as her Prime Minister and is stumped when he rejects her – Peel is the rightful candidate. Unable to accept this, Victoria concocts a plan that humiliates Peel, leaving him no choice but to refuse to form the government.
Here the official synopsis of episode 2 (according to Masterpiece):
Dodging both rioters and suitors, Victoria grows into her royal role. As she faces pressure to marry, her friendship with Lord Melbourne grows more complex.
Victoria episode 2 will air on PBS on Sunday (January 22) at 10 pm EST on PBS's Masterpiece. You can watch the episode live here.
