To mark the 25th anniversary of the princess’s death, Channel 4 give events a lengthy true-crime treatment. How will they commemorate the 50th?
Oh excellent. Another documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales. Just what we need. Days after Sky Documentaries’ The Princess comes Channel 4’s new series Investigating Diana: Death in Paris. How else can the 25th anniversary of her death be marked and monetised? Her workout playlist downloadable from Spotify, perhaps? A volume of princess-related poetry edited by Gyles Brandreth in which John Cooper Clarke rhymes Diana with spanner? A doorstep clap at the hour of her death, because that sort of thing really worked for the NHS?
Not that directors Will Jessop and Barnaby Peel aren’t geniuses. They’ve made a four-part series, microanalysing the circumstances of her death in the Alma tunnel on 31 August 1997, stretching and pulling historical material like cellophane over fading bouquets outside Kensington Palace. Only occasionally can you hear that tearing sound. Yet again, we hear Earl Spencer’s funeral oration; yet again, Diana looking faux-coyly over her shoulder in old snapshots; yet again, Tony Blair hitching his New Labour pony to the carriage of her celebrity with his oxymoronic invocation of the people’s princess.
