To Play the King - Episode 2

By the second episode the quarrel between the Palace and Downing Street is open. The King insists that politicians should have the interests of ordinary people at heart. Urquhart, who knows he cannot be seen to attack the monarch, pretends to take a more temperate stance towards the King's criticism of his policies. The sources describe this episode only in outline, but the outline shows a Prime Minister who is playing for time.

The Prime Minister is also troubled by his past deeds. In the first episode he was reminded of Mattie Storin and the recording that could ruin him, and the second shows him carrying that weight into a political fight. Ian Richardson plays Urquhart as outwardly serene and inwardly alert.

A Dutch listing for the episode adds that Urquhart, still at odds with the King, decides to call an election, and for that purpose invites older members of his party and his new adviser Sarah Harding to spend a weekend at Chequers. Kitty Aldridge, as Sarah, is the newcomer in Urquhart's circle, a pollster introduced by Elizabeth, played by Diane Fletcher. The cast list shows Colin Jeavons as Tim Stamper, who has been with Urquhart since the beginning and will feel the newcomer's arrival.

The royal side of the story involves Michael Kitchen's King, Rowena King as his press officer Chloe Carmichael, and Nicholas Farrell as the adviser David Mycroft. Bernice Stegers appears as Princess Charlotte, the royal whom Urquhart has bought as insurance, and David Ryall as Sir Bruce Bullerby, editor of the Daily Clarion.

Wikipedia's account of the whole serial has Stamper persuading the Princess to tell Bullerby lurid details of the family, on condition that they are published only after her death. The cast list places both actors in this episode, so that thread is probably active here, but no source ties a particular scene to it.

Andrew Davies wrote the episode and Paul Seed directed. It went out in the same Sunday evening slot as the first, a week after it, in the closing days of November 1993.

The reviewers who wrote about the serial as a whole stress the clash of institutions. One notes the irony that the monarchy seems more concerned with the lives of ordinary people than the elected government does, and finds the exchanges between the Palace and Downing Street entertaining and thought-provoking. That is the tension the second episode is built on: a Prime Minister with no scruples, set against a King who can only speak out.

IMDb voters give this episode 7.9 out of 10, the same as the first.

The sources do not describe how the episode ends, so this account stops at the point where the sources do.