TV review: The Princess — No wonder Diana barely smiled during her wedding

Hounded by TV crews... right before her wedding she found a bracelet Charles was planning to give Camilla... the commander of the horse escort on their wedding day is a Lt. Col Andrew Parker-Bowles — no wonder she barely smiled once during the wedding

The Princess airs on Sky Documentaries and on Now: film-maker, Ed Perkins, is shouting for Team Diana, and so will you when you see who is on the other side

They treated Princess Di like an animal. That’s what I got from The Princess (Sky Documentaries and NOW TV app).

The documentary film is an eerie treat, made up of contemporary news footage, daytime TV takes from Oprah Winfrey & Co, radio phone-in clips and actors’ voices relaying haughty press articles on the royal marriage. There is no voice-over or modern-day take from that lowest-of-the-low — a professional royal watcher. So the message is all the more stark.

Princess Diana takes Prince Harry to school 1992. Picture: Nils Jorgensen/Shutterstock

When a younger Charles muses on choosing a wife, he could be talking about a racehorse. We hear the cheerful news that a male relative of Diana vouched for her virginity. We watch the paparazzi trying to snap a big earner, discussing her like she was a cornered mouse. And to hammer home the point, there is a hunt featuring Camilla Parker-Bowles that includes footage of a hare being torn apart by the dogs.

The ‘treated her like an animal’ theme is deliberate — the film-maker, Ed Perkins, is shouting for Team Diana, and so will you when you see who is on the other side: Prince Andrew makes a brief appearance with his mother, and that should be enough for anyone.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their last official trip together. Picture: Getty Images

The story starts at the end with grainy footage of some rich people getting into a car in Paris. Then we’re back to a young Diana getting hounded down the street by a TV crew in West London, smiling nervously as she’s asked if she’s engaged to Charles. There is a cheeky chappie jumping up and down in the background, a sign that she can never go out in public again.

Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin as Charles and Diana in the hit series The Crown

I’ve seen a lot of this footage before, but Perkins leaves it unclipped here, so you get an extra awkward silence when the freshly engaged couple are asked what interests they share. 

The commentary has more clout without a voice-over, no more so when the actual commentator on the day tells us that the commander of the horse escort from St Paul’s cathedral on their wedding day is a Lt. Col Andrew Parker-Bowles, so the newlywed couple are “among friends”.

Princess Diana wearing a Jasper Conran suit during a visit to a community centre in Brixton, October 1983. (Photo by Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images)

Later we learn that this was only a few days after Diana found a bracelet that Charles was about to give to Camilla as a twisted wedding present. No wonder she barely smiled once during the wedding. 

It’s downhill after that. There is a gruesome scene where a newborn Prince William is presented to the press with the Queen and Queen Mum: Diana stressed out of her head like any new mother, the other two doing zero to help.

27 years ago: picture taken on August 19, 1995 of Diana and Harry watching veterans march outside Buckingham Palace for a VJ Day commemoration. Picture: Allan Lewis/AFP/Getty Images

You nearly feel sorry for Charles, the way Diana works the crowds during a trip to Australia, leaving him looking like an over-dressed security man. You genuinely feel for William and Harry, when they are paraded around London as part of their mother’s funeral cortège. William looks out from under his fringe with his mother’s eyes, frightened and confused, the image of Diana when the press started to hound her in the early 80s. It’s a sick obsession, the royal family. And we can’t get enough of it.