Queen of Oz review: Is the new Catherine Tate comedy worth a watch?
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With the possible exception of Matt Lucas's Vicky Pollard, the feckless teenager who loomed largest on noughties comedy TV screens was Catherine Tate's Lauren "Am I bovvered?" Cooper. The working-class caricature jumped out of The Catherine Tate Show to enter the zeitgeist and even performed at the Royal Variety Show in 2005, like the rank and file before aristocracy.
It's hard to believe playing on misogyny and classism for laughs was ever enough to tickle people the way Tate's Lauren Cooper character evidently did. But looking back at sketches like this amidst the cultural reckoning since then reminds you that while comedy may feel safe hugging some line of acceptability at the time, these metrics change.
After that example of punching down, Tate's latest sitcom turns to the upper crust for the punchline. The new six-part BBC comedy Queen of Oz follows Princess Georgiana (Tate), the ne'er-do-well scion of a – heavy emphasis on this word from the national broadcaster – fictional British royal family.
But the inspiration trends pretty heavily towards perennial party girl and rebel royal Princess Margaret.
The first episode opens with a humdrum scene from The Crown cutting-room floor, as Georgiana – or Georgie for short – pays a royal visit to a local school, teeming with little tots eager to show HRH what they dusted off in Art class. But it all goes awry when Georgie's antics from the night before get the better of her and she upchucks into the blonde tresses of one of the tots.
This little bit of vomit is deemed enough of a public scandal to threaten the stability of the monarchy, something which slightly stretches credulity given recent real-life events. But those at the top of the royal pyramid – who we never see on screen – decide to private-jet Georgie off to Australia, where the show was filmed, to be installed as their new on-the-ground representative.
This is spun publicly as an attempt at getting the Aussies to stay in the Commonwealth (really?). Accompanied by her feeble entourage, Georgie is installed at a palace in a country she fails to mask her disdain for.
Produced by Tate and co-written with her partner Jeff Gutheim, she seems to have learned lessons from her relatively plotless Netflix mock-doc Hard Cell and here maps out a clear, albeit roaming, story once Georgie lands Down Under.
For once, Tate has spared us and decided not to dress up in a bad wig to do a tired bit. She's also only playing one character, which is promising. Instead, she's on fairly fine form and when she allows her regent Georgie to be the butt of the joke Queen of Oz isn't half bad.
A bright spot comes in her exchanges with meek private secretary Bernard (William McKenna), including a surprisingly gory hunting expedition in the second episode. These scenes seem to be reaching for the illustrious heights of The Thick of It or The Office – which still looms so large over British comedy – and doesn't meet them, but in doing so lifts what is a fairly forgettable comedy.
There are certainly some decent gags peppered into Queen of Oz beyond the inevitable Aussie-based material – it will be interesting to see what Australians make of it – which mostly consists of lusting over the Hemsworth brothers. But when the jokes do come, they're more sharp exhalation of breath out your nose funny than head-back-roaring-with-laughter funny.
There also seems to be some effort to get away from that catchprased comedy of the "Am I bovvered?" days, with characters that mercifully do not just have dialogue consisting of one joke again and again.
Having said that there is an uncomfortable name-based joke directed at the Asian household staffer Weiwei (Anthony Brandon Wong), which even gets a needless call-back later on, neither of which were met with laughs in the press screening.
This may be the dregs of that ugly spirit of noughties comedy Tate first found fame in, but this sitcom is certainly better than that, so that when those moments come there's a feeling of being let down.
For a show that on paper reads like a promising send up of the monarchy, while also dodging a lot of the current scraps surrounding our royal family (whom this incarnation most certainly is not) watching Queen of Oz leaves us wondering if we're supposed to be rooting for Georgie or laughing at her. The prospect of it being the former makes the whole thing decidedly less enjoyable.
Queen of Oz is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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