The Lady review – ITV drama about Sarah Ferguson’s dresser just feels uncomfortable

If there is one thing that the six seasons of Peter Morgan’s The Crown proved, it’s that television audiences have an almost insatiable appetite for the scandalous intrigues of the House of Windsor. It’s fitting, then, that at a time when our newspapers are filled with tawdry revelations about the royal family, a new ITV drama, The Lady, resurfaces yet another disturbing chapter from its recent history.

Jane Andrews (Mia McKenna-Bruce) has grown up in a dead-end town in coastal Lincolnshire. These are the Thatcher years, and the centre of economic gravity is increasingly London. “You work in Marks and your boyfriend’s on benefits,” a snide friend remarks to Jane. “You’re going nowhere.” That’s when fate strikes: she gets a surprise interview for a job in the capital, as assistant dresser to Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (Natalie Dormer). She might not have the right accent – or even the right shoes – but Fergie takes a shine to her, and the trappings of lavish palace life prove very seductive. But there is an edge to Jane. Adolescent struggles with her mental health reassert themselves, her relationship with the duchess deteriorates, and a series of love affairs end in disaster. All of this brings us inexorably closer to something The Lady tells us from the outset: things will culminate in Jane committing a brutal murder.

People who were reading the tabloids in the early 2000s will already be familiar with the case of Jane Andrews, which provided salacious front pages for several months. The Lady looks to flesh out the story behind the headlines, casting McKenna-Bruce in a role that is half ingénue, half sociopath. Having broken through with the film How to Have Sex, McKenna-Bruce looks set for a strong TV career, having also led last month’s Seven Dials on Netflix. Jane is brittle, vulnerable and more than a little unlikeable – and McKenna-Bruce ably captures this prismatic personality. Across from her, Natalie Dormer (who has apparently declined to promote the show after Sarah Ferguson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein became public) brings her trademark side-eye to a depiction of the duchess as an insecure prima donna. “We’ve been through so much together,” she laments to Jane over the phone, as the police try to coax the assistant out of hiding. “How ever did it come to this?”

But here the fundamental problem of The Lady is in evidence. Jane is an unlikely heroine – vain, angry, duplicitous – and elicits limited sympathy. Her journey – from Cleethorpes to Sandringham – has a certain Cinderella dynamic, but the arc of her years as part of the Fergie entourage is quite flat. In fact, the whole case feels flat. Her troubled relationship with Thomas Cressman (Ed Speleers) deteriorates quickly (“you’re broken,” he rails, “there’s something deeply, deeply wrong with you”) leaving little impression of romance. In fact, there is nothing about either Jane or her crime that would interest writers of TV crime drama usually, save for the years of association she had with the royal family (or “the firm”, as Fergie puts it). As a result, The Lady keeps going back to that relationship, in just the same way that the tabloid headlines relentlessly deployed that high-society link.

Jane Andrews is still alive, released from prison and, presumably, has access to ITV. The family and friends of her victim are still alive. And so, the prurience of the case – including allegations, depicted here in the courtroom scenes, of rape and domestic abuse against Cressman, and sex abuse in Andrews’ childhood, all of which remains unproven – feels uncomfortable. “I’ve always had the utmost faith in British justice,” Ophelia Lovibond’s credulous socialite Aleksandra reassures Jane. But the four-episode arc of The Lady demonstrates our collective lack of interest in mere justice. ITV, which has specialised in British true crime in recent years (think The Long Shadow, about the Yorkshire Ripper, or The Hack, about phone hacking and the murder of Daniel Morgan), has alighted upon the story of Jane Andrews only because of the dark glamour of her fleeting association with the royals. It makes the series not only feel like it is invading the privacy of private individuals but leaves the drama itself rather inert.

Some of these criticisms are inevitable in true crime but others were avoidable. With a good cast (Philip Glenister and Claire Skinner also appear in supporting roles), appealing period production design, and a bouncy soundtrack ranging from Depeche Mode to Blondie, it’s clear that proper effort has been exerted on The Lady. It’s just a shame, then, that the series can’t escape its licentious origins in the worst sort of sleazy journalism.