Victoria's Empire
2007
📺 1 Season
🎬 3 Episodes
📅 Ended
🌐 EN
⏱️ 60 min/episode
Documentary
Victoria's Empire is a three-part British travel series that was first broadcast on BBC One in 2007. It was fronted by comedienne and actress Victoria Wood. Wood travelled around the world in search of the history, cultural impact and customs which the British Empire placed on the parts of the world it ruled. The documentary was called Victoria's Empire after the presenter, as Wood herself is named after the ruler of the British Empire, Queen Victoria. Wood specifically looked at places named after the monarch.
In total Wood visited nine countries:
She departed from London Victoria station for:
⁕Programme One: Calcutta, Hong Kong and Borneo
⁕Programme Two: Ghana, Jamaica and Newfoundland, Canada
⁕Programme Three: New Zealand, Australia and Zambia, finishing at the Victoria Falls.
Seasons
Season 1
Victoria Wood visits countries that used to be part of Queen Victoria's British Empire. In Calcutta she takes a taxi through the city to see the extent of the British residue and discovers very well preserved Victorian buildings amongst the colours and textures of this marvellous city. She chats with Indian resident Toby Sinclair and discovers the intriguing way we learned local languages, and the legacy that will allow India to become an economic super power.
Then it’s up to Darjeeling, where British women would avoid the intensity of the Calcutta summers, and where taking tea wasn’t the only diversion in the long, often lonely, summer nights.
In Hong Kong, Victoria visits a vet to discuss the Chinese and British polar attitudes towards pets and gets her love life analysed by a fortune teller, before in Borneo, Victoria comes face to face with the descendent of a chief head hunter, a local solidified bird spit delicacy and a baby Orangutan’s first attempts at climbing.
Credits:
Cast
Network
BBC One