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Queen Of Oz is a new ‘fish out of water’ comedy which sees Catherine Tate (Hard Cell) as the Prince Harry-type character of the piece, Princess Georgiana.
Given that the offscreen King decides to abdicate his Australian throne in her favour, that’ll send her 10,000 miles across to the other side of the world and make an adult of her, rather than let her leech off the state.
Unfortunately, she’s rather a raging drunk, which leads to some gross-out humour. At least she hasn’t worn a Nazi uniform… but then I’ve only seen one episode, so you never know.
There’s certainly no expense spent on the set, as she travels to Australia on a static set dressed as the interior of a private plane, meeting Australian Prime Minister Rebecca Stewart (Rachel Gordon) on arrival, who seems modelled on former New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern.
Georgiana is rude and obnoxious to everyone, insulting various members of staff – including something in particular that you’ll come across early on – so age-wise, she’s the middle-aged inbetweener for Lauren Cooper and Nan.
There’s also a fair number of people in the cast, but none of them particularly look like they’re enjoying themselves or want to be there.
Unfortunately, after watching the opener – which was the only one available prior to broadcast, I’m still waiting to laugh. There’s a Doctor Who reference in there, and Ms Tate turned out to be surprisingly good as Donna Noble when she boarded the TARDIS, even though Russell T Davies can’t write a sci-fi script to save his life, but Queen Of Oz is basically a half-baked idea that sounds like a pilot which probably wouldn’t get broadcast… although, it’s a whole six episodes.
Thanks to our friends at the BBC for the screener prior to release.
Queen Of Oz begins on Friday BBC1 at 9pm, and I expect after that, the whole series will be on the BBC iPlayer.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
There were a lot of tweets at the time of broadcast, which gave an indication of the feeling about this series. Two of these are below.
Director: Christiaan Van Vuuren
Producers: Michele Bennett, Helen Bowden
Creators: Catherine Tate, Borga Dorter
Writers: Catherine Tate, Jeff Gutheim
Cast:
Princess Georgiana: Catherine Tate
Marc Kemarre: Rob Collins
Matthew: William McKenna
Anabel: Niky Wardley
Bernard: Robert Coleby
Weiwei: Anthony Brandon Wong
Zoe: Jenna Owen
Freddie: Daniel Lapaine
Richard Steele: David Roberts
Rebecca Stewart: Rachel Gordon
Molly: Sunny Darcy-Smith
Headmistress: Luisa Prosser
Teddy: Rodger Corser
James: Gilbert Bradman
Themselves: Carol Vorderman, Greg James, Patrick Kielty, Zoe Ball, Emma Alberici
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.