#she's very good tho‚ playing Victoria across a more than 20 year period

[mariocki]

Rosemary Leach as Queen Victoria gradually comes to trust and then depend on her prime minister, in Disraeli (ATV, 1978)

#fave spotting #rosemary leach #disraeli: portrait of a romantic #disraeli #the power game #character actors #classic tv #atv #1978 #if i hadn't seen her name in the opening credits then i sincerely don't think I'd have recognised Rosemary in her first appearance in this #series (not pictured); she is introduced at the very end of the second episode‚ as Disraeli finally enters government #and she looks so severe and so.. idk! i was quite taken aback. plus that wig.. #she's very good tho‚ playing Victoria across a more than 20 year period #at first i thought the series had presented a rather dim version of Victoria‚ easily impressed by the flatteries Disraeli lays on #with a trowel‚ and more or less manipulated into supporting his policies. actually there's a little more nuance there (but nothing quite as #well developed as Granada's 1964 Victoria Regina; i feel like that spoiled me for Vic portrayals bc it's so courageously interrogational of #her character and personality and politics; then again this series is about Disraeli and Queenie is a small support so perhaps it's to be #expected). what was i saying? oh yeh‚ so Rosemary does suggest some depth where the script allows; the thawing towards Dizzy #and subsequent befriending‚ her command that he sit in her presence bc of his gout but despite protocol‚ her exceedingly low #opinion of Gladstone. it's Victoria as perhaps we know her in popular culture for the most part but with at least a little sparkle around #the edges and the kind of solid fleshing out a good actor can do with even a fairly broadly written part