Another late review unfortunately, as I had to rely on TiVo for this one! But still I couldn't go without my Victoria review, especially when this episode was so poignant. It got people talking about a time in history that people do not always cover in school.
So this episode covered the Irish Potato Famine, an awful occurance killing a million Irish people over the course of about seven years. I think that Victoria did the event justice the best they could, bearing in mind it was only one episode. The scenes on the famine were harrowing, and it made my blood boil that people were denied help simply because they were Catholic, and they should 'learn to live within their means'. I had never heard about this in detail, so I did some research on it, and it is sad to hear how little te government were said to have done.
I guess this is where the show was at a crossroads. They have been showing Victoria as a strong feminist figure, but how could they do that when from the outside it looked like she did nothing to stop the people. Well, her hands were tied by her Prime Minister who wanted to maintain his power over his party. Thus, no matter what she wanted, she could not do much.
I thought focus on one particular area through the eyes of Dr Robert Traill, played by Martin Compston was genius. He saw people starving in his parish, and wrote to Her Majesty, resulting in an invitation to Buckingham Palace to tell her in person how bad things were. It brought a more personal level to the disaster, which made it more effective to tell the story in one episode. Furthermore, Traill was a real person, as we tragically saw at the episodes end.
This was the main focus of the episode, so I wanted to make my review around it, but I will also talk about Miss Cleary, and seeing her suffer as her family starved. It was real, especially when her family were forced to emigrate to survive. It reflects very strongly with today's issues, and it showed the discrimination her faith suffered, and how not everyone agreed with it. I loved the scene when Lahzen apologised to the Queen for hiring a Catholic, and she just went 'what does it matter?' I wanted to applaud her!
I liked this episode very much, despite the dark storyline, and I am interested to see what the series covers next.
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