Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Hbo Home Video
• VHS Release Date: March 14, 2000
• Run Time: 51 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0783116438
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,251 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Based on the play An Evening with Queen Victoria, this thoroughly British Thames television production is a one-woman show taken verbatim from Her Royal Majesty's journals. Queen Victoria is portrayed by Prunella Scales, the actress perhaps best known as the shrewish wife Sybil Fawlty (opposite Monty Python's John Cleese) on the series Fawlty Towers. Scales makes a formidable and entirely credible Victoria in her last years, sitting alone in her drawing room reminiscing about her extraordinary life. As the memories flood in, Scales sometimes metamorphoses into a younger queen, strolling about her magnificent palace gardens. Victoria's journals are a wonderfully rich source, by turns inspiring, touching, witty, brutally candid--even, at times, surprisingly ribald. "I'm rather short for a Queen," she admits, "but I always sit up straight." She blasts her eldest son, "Bertie" (the future Edward VII), citing his "small and empty brain." Basking in the memory of her coronation, she declares, "We were not overwhelmed by our accession, rather full of courage. We took things as they came and knew they must be." With a minimum of bells and whistles, there emerges a fully realized portrait of Victoria Regina, the longest reigning monarch in the history of Great Britain. --Laura Mirsky

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Duller than it should be, October 10, 2000

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Queen Victoria: Evening at Osborne [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Queen Victoria: Evening at Osborne, is essentially a one woman show starring Prunella Scales, a great character actress (her depiction of Victoria's great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II in "A Question of Attribution" is superb). Unfortunately, neither Scales nor Queen Victoria shine here. Most of the time the Queen is shown as an octogenarian, reminiscing about her past and her family. At odd times the setting shifts backwards forty or fifty years, showing the Queen in youth or middle age. Nearly all of the dialogue is taken from the Queen's speeches, letters, and diaries. This is done well, as it shows Victoria's character, both positively and negatively, in her own words. The show could have been better if it had shown the Queen interacting with Prince Albert, Lord Melbourne, Disraeli, John Brown, or her mother and children rather than just talking about them. Instead, all we get is one woman droning on and on and on. Perhaps someday Prunella Scales can do Victoria in a movie or mini series with the scale to truly depict the Queen.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Misses the mark, February 27, 2002

By 

Maureen Ogorman "leneker" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Queen Victoria: Evening at Osborne [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The video is short (45 minutes) and at times confusing as it cuts between late 1900 and earlier periods in Victoria's life. Even a Victoria Buff like me was often trying to place and event or a comment into its proper decade on more than one occasion. I found this distracting, confusing and not adding to the entertainment value of the piece. It certainly did nothing to add to the educational value of the film.

Without the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the Royal presence, it was very hard to place the woman herself into a good context. It just seemed like a forgotten old lady in the corner of a nursing home talking to herself in lieu of any visitors.