The surprising success of a mediocre series, the 'Liz and Meghan Show'

You may remember that, back in the eighties and nineties, Britain and even much of the world was held enthralled by a long-running series, season after season after season, the Liz and Di Show.

It ended badly with the death of one of the protagonists, and the appalling behaviour of the other in response to it, but it was immensely successful. It occupied huge amounts of TV time and generated commentary across the media, for far longer than the actual quality of the show seemed to warrant.

Di and Meghan
Leading figures in two horribly similar shows

It seems odd to me that the makers decided to reprise the series, as the Liz and Meghan Show, over twenty years on. It has a new protagonist, Meghan, to replace Di, but the rest of the cast is practically unchanged. It’s just older.

Liz is still in place and still dictating the behaviour of those around her. That’s her family, or the ‘royal’ family, a family that constantly demonstrates that ‘royal’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘regal’. Her husband is now too old to be the figure of fun he once was, and indeed by overturning another driver’s car when he insisted on continuing to drive himself long beyond the age where it was safe, you could even argue he’s become positively unfunny. Not that everyone thought he was that amusing before.

The eldest son remains as strangely weird, with attitudes that are both reactionary and new age (in an outdated way), just as lost as ever, and just as incompetent.

One of the other sons has, however, plumbed new depths. He’s now accused of rape and paedophilia, which he denies, though he refuses to account for his behaviour to the relevant authorities, the American FBI. In effect, that makes him a fugitive from justice, but in plain sight, as one of the strange things about the non-regal family is that it still believes itself untouchable because it’s above the law.

And, since no one challenges that belief, it’s probably true.

Liz has been head of the family for nearly seventy years, which many seem to regard as a matter for celebration. Which is slightly odd, seeing as in our aspiringly democratic societies, one wouldn’t normally expect anyone to hold a position of quite such authority for anything like that long. And, since we also like to think of ourselves as meritocratic, it’s odd that she can count on such wealth and privilege by birth alone. I appreciate that being born is a heck of an accomplishment, given the countless numbers of human spermatozoids and eggs that don’t make it, but still there are nearly 8 billion out there who’ve pulled off the same trick. Not sure what merit the royals gain just from having managed to get born.

What might seem even more odd is that the makers of the show have gone for such a similar story arc to last time. 

Di was a pretty young thing, perhaps not too bright, who married into the royal family. To her disappointment, she discovered that it gave her the cold shoulder, while the publicity she rather craved turned into press hounding. The combined effect was to drive her into mental ill-health. When she cried for help, she found that the family had no support to offer, leaving her to sink still further.

Twenty years later, the replacement for Di, Meghan, is another pretty young thing who married into the royal family (one generation on). She’s rather brighter, more mature and more experienced (a successful career of her own, and a previous marriage that ended in divorce). That probably explains why she got out more quickly than the Di character did, before being destroyed by the coldness of the family and the persecution of the press as Di was. 

Exactly like Di, the character of Meghan also complains of anguish, depression and receiving no help from the family. 

And here’s the really surprising thing: the very same people who believed every word Di said in her series, and seem ready to shed a tear over her story to the present day, refuse to believe Meghan’s. They find her story unconvincing, even though it’s practically the same and involves the same characters in the family.

It may be that the crucial difference is that Meghan’s character is mixed-race. Let’s hope that the disbelief directed at Meghan isn’t because the audience of the two shows finds it easier to believe a white character than a mixed-race one.

Racism, as it happens, is one of the themes of the new series. Again, though, there seems to be a general desire to reject as false any accusation of racism by anyone in Liz’s family. Which is odd. After all, until someone definitively disproves the suspicion that the family contains a paedophile rapist, why should we write off as impossible the suggestion that it contains a racist?

Personally, I find the show boring and I’m only catching occasional extracts. It’s the reaction of the British audience I find curious. And that certainly has caught my attention, for its weirdness, and by its over-the-top deference to those who claim to be superior to others, without ever proving that they are.