Do you remember the good ol’ days when Sarah Ferguson was just a slightly hapless freeloader who dressed like a window display in a hurricane and had an embarrassing sideline as the author of a children’s book about a helicopter called Budgie?
Recent events have somewhat altered both the public perception of the woman and her fortunes, and her terrible year will not be improved by the arrival of The Lady (ITV1), scriptwriter Debbie O’Malley’s four-part drama about another sorry, if slightly tangential, tale from the Fergie annals: her former dresser Jane Andrews’s murder of her businessman boyfriend, Thomas Cressman. It is expertly put together and, at times, oddly moving and powerful.
The Cressman family have had to live with the awfulness of what happened on September 17, 2000, and I suspect many people will not want to see this appalling story disinterred. But as a focus on a troubled woman’s encounter with ambition, venality and a world of callous, gilded frippery, this is a surprisingly rich human study packed with unexpected tenderness.
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Mia McKenna-Bruce, one of Britain’s biggest rising stars, is outstanding. She allows us to root for Andrews in the early moments when she leaves Grimsby and a dead-end boyfriend and retail job to head to London for a dream posting in a palace. There are signs from the off that she is a vulnerable depressive with flashes of anger as well as charm and pizzazz. A parallel timeline of the police investigation led by Philip Glenister’s DCI Keith Douglas shows us where this ended up, but the murder story is informed throughout by a wary compassion. We live, these days, in more understanding times.
At Buckingham Palace she overhears other servants mocking her accent and dress sense. And at her first meeting with Natalie Dormer’s duchess, her boss talks patronisingly about life “oop north”. Yet while Andrews has loving, supportive parents and many opportunities, it’s clear that the biggest obstacle is herself. “Why can’t I be happy?” is a common refrain, and a pattern of intense possessiveness and stalking is clear even before her ill-fated meeting with Cressman, played with likeable charm by Ed Speleers.
“This is a surprisingly rich human study packed with unexpected tenderness”
PA
This has the classy production values of The Crown (it’s made by the same production company) and comes with that show’s familiar narrative structure, where paired storylines comment on and contrast the other. Andrews and Ferguson were propelled to higher stations by dint of personality and neither fitted in; both were victims of their passions and appetites.
Dormer, who has said she is donating her acting fee for the drama to childhood abuse charities, ably captures Ferguson’s fey fecklessness. She is a tornado of red hair who, while not necessarily unkind, is unthinking, especially when she lets Andrews go for seemingly flirting with one of her alleged lovers. Her cack-handed manner even extends to the inelegant way she walks or sits on chairs.
There are excellent supporting performances, with Ophelia Lovibond on particularly good form as a braying chum who teeters close to Sloane cliché without toppling over the edge. The former Prince Andrew is often mentioned but does not appear. Small mercies, I suppose.
★★★★☆
Available on ITVX
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