Victoria & Albert (2001)

Lavish two-part dramatisation of the passionate love story that was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's lengthy marriage. Beginning in 1837, the year of King William IV's death and 18-year-old Victoria's ascension to the throne, the series charts the tumultuous period in 19th Century England where Victoria comes to terms with the enormous duties that lay ahead of her, while also falling deeply in love with her beloved Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The marriage and birth of their nine children are featured, as is Albert's frustration by the inactivity he experienced in the early years of his role as Prince Consort. The Queen's very different relationships with her first two Prime Minister's, the resentment the British government felt about a German interfering in matters of state and Albert's greatest achievement - The Great Exhibition of 1851 - are all intertwined in this remarkable love story which ended tragically in 1861 with Albert's early death from typhoid.