Prince Andrew: The Musical
Thursday 9pm, Channel 4
Ranking: 
Nobody anticipated Prince Andrew to show up on the Christmas Day service in Sandringham, however there he was on Sunday, bundled up in his fugitive overcoat, hanging in the back of the royal pack as they made their method to church.
Sheepish or shifty? How one interpreted his manner could be very a lot depending on how charitable you are feeling in the direction of the disgraced prince.
I’ve zero sympathy for the vainglorious buffoon, however allegations of sexual assault towards a 17-year-old – nonetheless vehemently denied – don’t make him a paedophile, legally or morally.
It’d make him repugnant and sleazy and silly and weak and responsible by affiliation with a person like Jeffrey Epstein – however I feel we’ve to be honest when contemplating the behaviour of a royal who gave a £12million settlement to a girl he says he can’t even bear in mind assembly. Stuff occurs. Or does it?
JAN MOIR: On Thursday evening, Channel 4 will broadcast Prince Andrew: The Musical, billed as a satirical send-up of the royal black sheep. Curtain name? C4’s musical recreates the Newsnight interview with Kieran Hodgson as Andrew and Emma Sidi as Emily Maitlis, above
Definitely, the royal diehards who lined the path to the Church of St Mary Magdalene on Sunday appeared happy sufficient to see him, though King Charles has all however banished his youthful brother from public life.
But it’s unlikely that the Duke of York would have been there with out some form of semi-official royal sanction.
And who’s to disclaim a prodigal son – maybe one who’s even searching for repentance – the consolation available from a home of worship on one of many holiest days of the yr?
Nonetheless, Prince Andrew stays the grim midwinter within the Windsor calendar, the lifeless mouse within the royal punchbowl, the kipper sewn into the ermine ruff. What does the long run maintain for him now?
Disgrace and censure proceed to cloud his tentative efforts in the direction of some form of civic rehabilitation and nothing appears left for him besides widespread disdain and mockery. And there may be actually no scarcity of the latter.
For on the finish of one other torrid yr the fates have yet one more punishment in retailer for the late Queen’s favorite son.
On Thursday evening, Channel 4 will broadcast Prince Andrew: The Musical, billed as a satirical send-up of the royal black sheep.
Interspersed with real-life footage of key occasions in Andrew’s life, the one-hour particular begins along with his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in 2019 and it’s a quick slide into ignominy and humiliation from there. Cue the music!
‘I can’t imagine I stated it, that factor concerning the sweat. Though you’d slightly have a prince who’s dry than one who’s soaking moist,’ sings the prince within the present’s opening quantity I Nailed It.
But this lack of wildness and absence of royal jeopardy all make for a slightly tepid present. Emma Sidi performs Maitlis and Jenny Bede (pictureed) is the Duchess of York
Different songs embody Will You Be My Ex-Spouse?, Obey and, lastly, You’re At all times Going To Want An Andrew – which provides some thought of the distressingly pin-thin degree of satire on supply.
There may be not even a point out of Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre, who’s lacking in musical motion on the grounds of excellent style, one presumes.
But this lack of wildness and absence of royal jeopardy all make for a slightly tepid present. Emma Sidi performs Maitlis and Jenny Bede is the Duchess of York. ‘Everybody is aware of I’ve obtained subtlety popping out of my wonderful a**e,’ she sings in what is nearly the worst line within the present. In any present you care to say!
Reedy-voiced Munya Chawawa isn’t successful as Prince Charles. ‘Perhaps that’s the reason I’m so dry, all I can do is change into a stamp and die,’ he whine-sings.
In the meantime, there are cameo roles for Harry Enfield as Tony Blair and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Baga Chipz, who turns Margaret Thatcher right into a predictably ghastly gargoyle.
She’s not even related to Prince Andrew’s story, however nobody related with Channel 4 is ever going to withstand a gratuitous Thatcher bash, proper? Proper.
Nevertheless, the star of the present is the slightly profitable Kieran Hodgson, who not solely wrote the musical however performs each young and old Prince Andrews as thickos misplaced in a fog of entitled befuddlement. No complaints from me there.
However don’t get excited. This musical lands no blows, barely has an honest tune to its identify and is as trite as a meringue. Key moments are dealt out like spinning playing cards; Fergie, helicopters, toes, air miles, golf, daughters, Ghislaine, Epstein, shame, the top.
And whereas there may be a lot that’s unhealthy – so very, very unhealthy – within the Duke of York’s life, why waste time ridiculing the great components? His army service, his paternal devotion and the admirable success of his post-divorce relationship along with his ex-wife are all commendable, not laughable. However there may be to be no clemency for Andrew, not now, maybe not ever.
The musical is a part of C4’s Fact and Dare: 40 Years of Pushing Boundaries season.
Different programmes within the sequence have included a documentary about males with extra-large penises, the controversial comic Frankie Boyle on 1,000 years of the British monarchy – uh-oh – and a documentary about an Afghan porn star.
Penises and porn? That is the terrain that the shamed Duke of York should negotiate, that is the corporate that he now should maintain.
Reedy-voiced Munya Chawawa isn’t successful as Prince Charles. ‘Perhaps that’s the reason I’m so dry, all I can do is change into a stamp and die,’ he whine-sings
In response to the present’s producer Adam Reeve, doing a musical about him was Channel 4’s thought. I wager it was.
It appears to be open season on the Home of Windsor, more and more seen as figures of enjoyable assailed by a brand new, informal brutality.
The C4 musical even conjures up a tampon joke to embarrass the King, whereas he and Prince Andrew are usually not the one royals to function in seasonal entertainments. Oh sure they’re. Oh no they’re not!
In Sir Ian McKellen’s smash hit Mom Goose panto, at present on the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, a Camilla, Queen Consort character (Genevieve Nicole) performs castanets as she lies on the ground along with her legs large aside, yelling: ‘This’ll get the prince’s belief!’
Final yr, Diana: The Musical opened and closed on Broadway; a rock-opera model of the previous Princess of Wales’s life that presupposed to be ‘a few lady who selected to be fearless, and in consequence turned timeless’.
It was additionally proven on Netflix, and a few of you may bear in mind the horror of the lyrics – for a lot of of them weren’t chic, however a criminal offense towards rhyme for which somebody ought to have achieved time.
‘Oh Harry, my ginger-haired son, you’ll be second to none,’ Diana sang at one level. Later she wished to inform ‘the reality about Charles and his mistress Camilla – he’s a 3rd charge Henry VIII and she or he’s Godzilla’.
It pains me to report that Prince Andrew: The Musical is little higher. ‘I fought the Argies single-handed, give or take a fleet. With out my chopper and my joystick, we’d have confronted defeat,’ sings Andrew.
Nevertheless, there’s a well timed reminder that it was Peter Mandelson, supported by then prime minister Tony Blair, who made the prince a government-backed commerce envoy within the first place.
Are you able to think about such a ridiculous factor occurring now? Maybe it’s all for one of the best that immediately we reside in a really totally different period – a time when the age of deference is nicely and actually over and nobody thinks twice about being uproariously impolite to a Royal Household that can’t reply again
The final quantity in Prince Andrew: The Musical finds our eponymous hero in prime hat and tails, high-kicking his approach via a razzle-dazzle routine.
Within the track, the princely character argues that he fulfils a strategic position because the Royal Household’s fall man.
‘I used to be born to be the scapegoat of all our household’s disgrace. Members of the nice unwashed demand a saint, however good is one thing we ain’t,’ he trills.
It’s a risible conceit after all, however his last phrases are all too plausible.
‘You haven’t heard the final of me but,’ sings Prince Andrew because the curtain comes down. Ominous.
