To be a television critic these days is simple: you just need loads of things to say about the late Queen’s hair. You need to be able to describe it in absolute flinty detail; how it curled, for example, in a slightly ironed fashion, like the terrier on the front of a can of upmarket dog food.
You need to be able to detect the infinitesimal differences between two identical actresses offering exactly the same performance as her daughter-in-law Diana. You need to have a high tolerance for an inordinate number of mentions of the word “femly” and for entirely fictional soap opera scenes where members of the “femly” will tell each other how disappointed they are to be a prince/princess/duke before asking each other, as if they had no idea they were royals: “But what is the monarchy for?”
