The Queen's Castle (2005) Online

This documentary provides a rare and excellent insight into life behind the scenes of Winsor Castle, UK. All aspects of castle life, from the new look of the castle gift-shop through the cow-breeders and clock adjuster to the Queen and Prince Philip himself are shown. The camera-work is very good, with many grand scenes of the interior and exterior of the castle.

Prince Phillip appears quite frequently in the series and even has an episode more-or-less of his own, where his work as a Ranger is portrayed and he shows us (the viewers) a nice tour of the countryside among the castle.

I found this series to be annoying and irritatingly tedious. I'm generally interested in royal stories. I've been to Windsor and found it interesting. But somehow these three hours managed to leave me put out that I wasted all that time. While the producers were supposedly given free reign to wander the precincts for a year, the series ends up being repetitive and dull. It seems clear that they managed to spend serious amounts of time with only 5 or 6 people (the castle warden, the clockmaker, some cowmen, the fender-men and the Duke of Edinburgh) and simply chop up these film bits over the course of the series. We are told over and over again that the castle is old ("through 40 reigns") that the current occupants are mere custodians, that it is "a living castle". Large stretches feel more like a tourist brochure than any kind of "in depth" study of the castle's workings. The producers also spend far too much time on a couple of set pieces which are not anywhere near as interesting as they want you to think they are --- did we need so very much time seeing maids dusting?, the clock-man resetting all the clocks at the end of daylight saving time?, the footmen preparing the tables for state dinners? Surprising, only the interviews with Prince Philip prove interesting, as he has been responsible for overseeing this estate for 50 years and has clear and strong opinions about things that he is not afraid to state.

The saddest bit is that this series plays fully into the argument of those who claim the monarchy is an absurd anachronism. Thousands of hours and millions of hours are spent maintaining an odd sort of half life at Windsor for the monarch and her family to play out ceremonies that everyone admits are pointless. The Queen and her family regularly appear looking bored to tears (as they well might be-- trapped in a gilded cage doing nothing of consequence) and smacking on professional smiles to make it through the inanity.