Who is new ITV drama The Lady really for? It's certainly not for those impacted by this royal-adjacent story

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

In her new book about a century of royal fashion – a surprisingly nuanced look at how the House of Windsor has used couture to both express and conceal itself – author Justine Picardie recounts an encounter after a Balmoral picnic when the late Queen "pulled on her rubber gloves and started to clear the table".

If such an example of royal relatability isn’t that novel (we have long known of the same monarch’s fondness for Tupperware, after all), it offers a rare bit of respite in a week peppered by allegations of behind-palace-walls business of a far less wholesome kind.

Into this quagmire falls The Lady, ITV’s dramatisation of what we can call a "royal-adjacent" tale. The four-part drama follows the rise and fall of Jane Andrews, the former dresser to the then Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. Andrews was convicted in 2001 of the murder of her lover Thomas Cressman and served an 18-year prison sentence.

It’s an interesting enough story of a troubled woman desperate to escape her working-class background who answered an ad in a magazine (yes, The Lady) and somehow ended up kissing the hem, possibly literally, of royalty.

The performances by the two female leads are excellent: Mia McKenna-Bruce brings depth and complexity to Andrews, while Natalie Dormer’s Duchess conveys Tiggerish self-pity without slipping into full pantomime dame.

The elephant casting a huge shadow over proceedings is the nature of recent revelations concerning Ferguson’s behaviour in pursuit of rich, flattering associates. Filming wrapped in the spring of last year, and Natalie Dormer has since refused to promote the drama, donating her fee to child abuse charities.

Watching The Lady now, it’s impossible not to shudder as her staff whisper "that’s the American" while the duchess embraces a wealthy new friend (presumably the relatively benign entrepreneur Steve Wyatt). We all know what lies ahead.

Who does that leave viewers to care about? Four long hours of narrative invite us to invest in Andrews, to side with her when she arrives at Buckingham Palace and overhears the mockery of snobby colleagues ("Just look at her shoes"), to cheer when she channels Julia Roberts to go shopping and carry hat boxes in time to the strains of Roy Orbison, to boo when she gets the boot from Ferguson’s employ.

But this becomes a problem as Pretty Woman swiftly gives way to Fatal Attraction and Andrews is seen demonically trashing an early lover’s home, before losing her job and later her freedom. It says something about being born under an unlucky star when being employed as Ferguson’s stylist is only the second worst thing to happen in your life.

While I’m sure there are jokes to be made about crimes against fashion, telling Andrews’s story so fully feels like scrutinising a crime that still haunts her victim’s family. Andrews wasn’t involved at all in the project, while Cressman’s family did not want it made, so why make it in the face of such collective 25-year-long sadness?

Because both ITV and Left Bank Pictures, the company that produced The Lady (and before that The Crown), know that royal and royal-adjacent stories will always find an audience. Add that to the bottomless market for true crime on TV, and it’s a ground-skimming fruit I’m surprised took this long to come to screen.

The one thing the makers couldn’t legislate for was how ongoing revelations mean that what started out as another fail-safe behind-palace-walls commission has become a poisoned chalice that will require more to wipe clean than a monarch in Marigolds.

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The Lady will launch on Sunday (22nd February) at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

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