Confessions of a Mild Anglophile

So we are less than two full days into 2021 and I have already broken one of the promises I made to myself: to not bring any new podcasts into my life. I really love podcasts, I listen to them every single day through out my day, and it was getting to the point where I could never catch up on my favorites. I even made a podcast priorities schedule, and I had to make some tough cuts. However, when I found out about a new podcast that premiered on December 29, I knew I had to make an exception. That podcast was the inaugural episode of Archewell Audio, the new podcast by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

For the not-in-the-know, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is the official title of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, a title they did not give up when they took a step back from their duties as senior members of the royal family. What do these titles mean, exactly? I don’t know! I really don’t have a strong grasp on the various honorifics of royal and upperclass Britons. Since watching Bridgerton, I now know that a duke is higher than a viscount, a word I hadn’t even heard before watching Enola Holmes, but that’s really the extent of my knowledge. Hence why I titled this blog post Confessions of a Mild Anglophile- I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs.

In early November, when it felt like the foundation of American democracy was crumbling beneath our feet, I found great solace in The Great British Bake Off , a TV series I reserve for mental health catastrophes such as the United States presidential election. I do love baking and have always loved cooking shows, but as a vegan (and, honestly, not the best baker) watching GBBO feels more like a work of cultural anthropology than any sort of baking education.

The people on the show speak the same language as us, but they are so unlike us. When I’ve watched American competition baking shows, such as Cupcake Wars, the stakes are always artificially inflated. The competition is usually one day long, involves a glamorous event happening that very night (probably not actually, but that’s how the make it seem on TV), and has a significant cash reward. This breeds stress and animosity amongst the contestants, who I’m sure are being egged on by producers off camera, in a situation that doesn’t really merit that much stress. Yes, there is money on the line, but you’ve given up one day of your life for what will amount to a lot of free publicity for your bakery, whether you win or not.

Bake Off is the anti-Cupcake Wars. The contestants are all amateur bakers who give up their weekends for up to ten weeks, if they make it to the finals, for the grand prize of… a custom cake stand. Of course, a handful of bakers have gone on to careers as cookbook authors, the hosts of cooking shows, or food writers, but there are no guarantees.

And while on American competition television, British judges tend to fall in the Simon Cowell tradition of being the harsh Brit in contrast to the soft Americans, Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry are so, so nice. Both can be tough critics, especially Paul, but neither are ever needlessly cruel and they don’t deliver criticism that isn’t constructive. They always let the bakers know how they could have done better or avoided their missteps. An American competition show would never!

In addition to my early November Bake Off bingeing, we were blessed with a new season of The Crown on November 15. I have loved The Crown since the beginning- it’s particular brand of Netflix-prettiness was what first attracted me to the show, but I can now say I am thoroughly hooked. I know enough about recent British history to not be lost, but I still find so much of what happens on the show to be unexpected and often thoroughly scandalous.

Peter Morgan has also done an excellent job perfecting the bait and switch- he makes you fall in love with a character and then pulls out the rug from under them, exposing their deepest flaws. This was first done masterfully with the story of Edward VIII, the older brother who abdicated forcing his younger brother, King George, Queen Elizabeth’s father, onto the throne. In season one, the audience sees things clearly from Edward’s perspective- what choice did he have? To marry the woman he loved, he had to leave his family, and they ultimately treated him with utter disdain because of his desire to follow his heart. However, in mid-season two, Edward returns to England to ask Elizabeth to reinstate him in a public role. This forces those close to the Queen to reveal the truth that Edward had close ties to high-ranking members of the Nazi party. Remind me to tell you sometime about when I tried to discuss this with British tourists when I worked at Anthropologie in Chelsea Market. It was… odd, to say the least.

We see a similar trajectory with the characterization of Prince Charles, who, although very close to his great-uncle, I think we can safely say isn’t a Nazi. In season three, I fell completely in love with young Charles (no doubt in large part a credit to his portrayal by Josh O’Conner), and it was so easy to see him as a young man completely misunderstood by his parents and trapped by his circumstances. And then we get to season four, and we finally meet Diana. Unless you’ve been living under a rock since the 1980s, I think you have an idea about how Charles comes out in the events of this season.

This long tangent brings us back to the point being made at the beginning of my post, which is that I, as a mild Anglophile, will drop anything for some royal family content, and there has been no shortage this past year, especially in regards to Princess Diana. In early April, comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll released Oh, Hello: the P’dcast, in which their characters George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon, attempt to uncover the truth about what happened to Princess Di. Of course, it’s totally ridiculous, but their interviews with everyone from Ira Glass to John Oliver to Lin-Manuel Miranda to Pete Davidson makes for the funniest look into the tragedy of the people’s princess.

Another podcast deep dive, albeit from a much more genuine place of journalistic integrity, was in the five part Princess Diana series on You’re Wrong About, released from September to November of last year. You’re Wrong About is a podcast where journalists Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall unpack events from history or people in the public eye who have been misunderstood, and their complete dissection of the entire Princess Diana saga was a great warm-up to the fictionalized version in The Crown. I was also delighted when Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes, the posh hosts of my old favorite podcast The High Low (RIP), talked about how much they loved listening to Mike and Sarah try to understand the weirdness of British high society. It felt weirdly validating to know that the hosts of one of my favorite podcasts listen to and enjoy one of my other favorite podcasts. What a small world!

So if you, like me, are enamored with the familiar foreignness of the British monarchy and/or British culture in general, I highly recommend any of the TV shows or podcasts already discussed. If you’re shaking your head thinking, “Steph, I’ve listened to and seen all of those already,” then fear not, because at least three more versions of Princess Di’s story are coming down the pipeline. On May 25, Diana: A New Musical, will be released on Netflix, over a year after it was supposed to open on Broadway. To be honest, I have fairly low expectations for this show, at least in part because Prince Charles is played by Roe Hartrampf, who you may know as Emily’s boring Chicago boyfriend from the pilot of Emily in Paris, which seams like a weird casting choice to me, and thus I am wary about the rest of the production. I’ll be watching it anyway and will make sure to report back. Additionally, none other than Kristen Stewart will be stepping into the royal slippers of the Princess of Wales for Spencer, a new biopic specifically focused on her decision to divorce Charles. While Kristen Stewart is also an unexpected casting choice, I have more faith in her abilities and am very excited for this film, whenever it does come out. And of course, some day, we’ll have the fifth season of The Crown, with a whole new cast of the best British actors taking on the royal family.

And, if you still don’t care at all, that’s fine. Our founding fathers did fight an entire war so we wouldn’t have to care about these people… and for some other important reasons as well. But I feel like there’s something magical about kings and queens and princes and princesses still existing in a country just across the pond, even if they don’t really do anything. I’m sure if my tax dollars funded their lifestyle, I would have stronger opinions, but for now I will eat up all the entertainment about them that I can, especially anything about Princess Di and her daughter-in-law Meghan. There’s something incredibly romantic about a commoner marrying a prince, and of course incredibly tragic about how these two women, a generation apart, just seeking love and happiness, found something entirely different. Hopefully, if the last few minutes of the first episode if Archewell Audio is any indication, Meghan is on a very different path than her husband’s late mother. I wish them all the best in the new year, and can’t wait to keep obsessing over them from a distance, in the least creepy way possible.