Prince Andrew The Musical - Channel 4

Saw some people on Twitter reacting to the trailer like ‘why would you make this??’ and ‘ugh why are they doing this?’ - as if it was an earnest musical and not biting, purposefully controversial satire to drag his public image through the mud more than it already is.

I wonder what his alleged victims will think of it?

If you think this gives Prince Andrew some sort of glory you're not paying attention.

Also, did you feel the same way about war monger Tony Blair and his musical? Or The Producers mocking Hitler?

Love the use of the Pizza Express logo. They'll be absolutely fuming!

3 songs in and while the songwriting isn’t amazing, it has the sense of irony (and knowing wink) that Diana the musical needed.

I take it back, the songs have picked up (so far the best songs are Sarah Furgeson’s song ‘My Profiterole In This’ and their divorce duet)

Using real life footage to kind of trace his life (and show that he’s always been a scumbag from the start), it really works as a mocking satire.

For me, it just painted him as ridiculous, rather than predatory. The songs didn’t really go anywhere, or say anything. It was going for base humour, rather than any subtext or biting commentary. All we really had was a mention that he was knew Epstein, and then Charles admonishing him for hanging around with pedophiles.

The video footage of Andrew and its commentary said far more than the songs did. I think I’d rather have had a version that was “The Trial of Prince Andrew”, in an alternate reality, and hear the thoughts of witnesses, the jury and the press.

And if you’re going to write a musical… have catchy songs, rather than just sung text. At the end we had a title card explaining how things had ended up. Don’t tell… show.

And given that the real star of the evening was the orchestra… perhaps list them in the credits?

The London Musical Theatre Orchestra have tweeted publicising the album on Spotify

tbh making him ‘evil’ would be glorifying him more - it’s better to make him an un remorseful buffoon rather than feed his ego. The real guy said he doesn’t sweat because of war PTSD and that he was at a pizza express - he’s hardly a cold, calculating guy in real life. He’s an evil scum bag, but he’s not in any way calculating (because he’s an idiot)

That he’s a predatory idiot?

Well I thought it was hilarious and thoroughly enjoyed it.

From seeing the trailers I was a bit dubious about this enterprise, but I was gobsmacked when I saw the programme in full.

First of all I feel this has been scheduled by C4 at a point where every thing that has been observed/satirised about this woeful crime has already been said. If they were going to do something like this, it should have been much closer to the time when it all blew up.

As soon as I saw the actor playing Andrew turn the photo of Epstein face down before the Matilda interview ,my heart sank and I realised this was likely to be ‘satire’ painted with very broad brush strokes.

I thought it was woefully unfunny and seemed like the star of the show who also apparently wrote it, had never seen a musical in his life and therefore did not have a clue how to accurately parody the genre ( at least do your homework please).

I’m just flabbergasted that this amateur bilge came from the same broadcaster that was behind The Windsors, which for the most part was pin sharp with top class performances.

In my humble opinion, Prince Andrew - The Musical looked like a cheap mess (I would imagine a good chunk of their budget went on the archive footage which didn’t sit well with the rest of the show at all) and had all the comedic danger of a children’s show.

I am astonished that C4 thought the programme was of a sufficient quality to put out. Given the details of the whole Epstein/Maxwell saga, if someone is going to write a satire about it, it has to really punch above its weight
comedically, offer up another perspective that we haven’t already heard about countless times before and have some sort of point to the programme that justifies dredging it all up again, particularly for the victims of this appalling abuse.
None of the above were in evidence.

What an embarrassment both for Harry Enfield who seems to be appearing in anything and everything indiscriminately these days , Hattrick Productions, who should have known better and C4 for short changing their audiences with such substandard material (something they seem to be doing regularly in the last few years).

* Alleged victims