The life of Queen Victoria explored in new drama

ITV has commissioned a major new eight-part drama, Victoria, focusing on the life of Queen Victoria.

The drama from Mammoth Screen (Poldark) follows the early life of our longest reigning monarch, who ascended the throne at the tender age of 18.

The series is created and written by acclaimed novelist Daisy Goodwin, in her screenwriting debut, who will also serve as executive producer alongside Dan McCulloch and Mammoth Screen’s Damien Timmer.

Daisy Goodwin said, “I’ve been fascinated by Victoria since I started reading her diaries at university. She’s a woman whose personality leaps off the page – a tiny 4 foot 11 teenager who overnight became the most powerful woman in the world, and her candour and spirit makes for an irresistible heroine. Victoria was the first woman to have it all; she had a passionate marriage, nine children and was grandmother to most of Europe’s royalty, but she also had a job, being Queen of the most important nation in the world. It wasn’t easy; her reign was beset by scandal and sleaze and it was only by sheer force of personality that she prevailed. Her diaries, all sixty two million words of them, give an astonishingly vivid picture of her transformation from rebellious teenager into, to my mind, our greatest Queen.”

Damien Timmer said, “Queen Victoria’s court is the perfect setting for an epic drama – a seething hotbed of scandal, corruption and romantic intrigue, involving everyone from the humblest dresser to the Mistress of the Robes, the lowliest bootboy to the Lord Chamberlain. When we join Victoria in 1837, England is unrecognisable from the country it will become by the end of her reign. As she takes her fledgling steps as monarch we slowly see modern Britain emerge.’

Victoria will begin filming in the UK from September 2015. Casting is yet to be confirmed.