A Very British Romance With Lucy Worsley
What is this thing called love? It may have been a rhetorical question for Cole Porter, but at last we have an answer: an entirely artificial construct borne of cultural mores. And if that sounds a wearyingly dusty explanation for the mysteries of the heart, don’t worry – our guide and scholar for these matters is the sublimely entertaining Lucy Worsley. The historian is always a winning mischief-maker, her considerable and provocative intellect matched by a readiness to make us laugh. Her three-part series, A Very British Romance With Lucy Worsley (Thursday, BBC Four, 9pm) begins among the hardbitten rough and tumble of society in the Georgian era.
You’ll be moved by the case of poor Mary Granville, a young girl who had a beastly old man foisted upon her in an arranged marriage. It was not long before she found her hard-drinking husband lying dead, later noting: ‘Being a widow was not unwelcome.’ Yet things soon moved on apace in the 18th century, with the cult of sentimentality, and the growing sophistication among young lovers engendered by newly popular romantic novels.
Worsley immerses us in every relishable detail of the times, never missing an opportunity for playful dress-up. Give credit to a woman who, even as she sits topped by a foot-high example of what she calls the ‘peak wig’ of the 1780s, demands more feathers to add to the already startling effect.
NOT TO BE MISSED
The Celts Mon, BBC2, 9pm
Discover the surprise sophistication of the Celts as Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver explore their vanished world.
Lewis Tues, ITV, 9pm
Oxford’s dogged inspector (Kevin Whately) is back to solve the case of a body in a well – if only his new boss will let him.
The Great British Bake Off Weds, BBC1, 9pm
And then there were three: iced buns and classic British cakes are on the menu as Mary and Paul pick the winner.