Something astonishing has happened. After weeks of the builders doing absolutely nothing but have the odd chat, a whole new wing of scaffolding has appeared on the other wing of Versailles overnight. Naturally Louis is delighted and takes a bunch of ducs on a tour of the building site. Whereupon one very grumpy builder moans about health and safety – there isn’t a hi-vis jacket in sight – and the absence of a minimum wage before hanging himself devant le roi. Versailles never ceases to amaze: at the very moment some building work actually appears to be taking place, 2,000 ex-army labourers are apparently on strike.
Back indoors, Louis looks into the middle-distance enigmatically, while Cassel – whose chateau was burned down at the end of the last episode – is given a palace broom cupboard to live in. I hope it’s got washing facilities; his hair is beginning to look increasingly manky. If I didn’t know better, I’d take this as a sign he was up to no bon.
Louis goes outside again to chat to the gardener, who is doubling up as the king’s therapist, and who advises him to let his brother, the now Surprisingly-Quite-Good Philippe, negotiate with the builders as he is good with ex-soldiers. Louis decides he isn’t ready for that and sends Rohan to chat to the builders. I still haven’t a clue who or what Rohan is and what he is doing in the series. Versailles was clearly made for a more sophisticated audience.
The young woman who was once a mistress of Louis and is now self-flagellating on an hourly basis wants to go to a nunnery but le roi refuses. Even though we’re now well past the halfway point in the series, there’s still any number of characters whose names I have yet to learn. The ex-mistress is but one. Next up is a whole load of people we’re not meant to recognise even were we to know who they are, as they are filmed from the neck down and in near-total darkness, passing messages to one another. Something tells me a conspiracy is afoot ...
Sure enough, there is Mauvais Philippe trying to sweet-talk the Surprisingly-Good-Philippe. “I’m mazy and far too keen on frivolity,” he simpers in the language of the 17th-century French court, before suggesting they go for a morning walkies in the jardin. Surprisingly-Good-Philippe reluctantly agrees and is immediately accosted by one of the builders on strike who asks him to be their union rep. Surprisingly-Good-Philippe rushes off to dinner to offer his services as an ACAS official but Louis gives him the epaule froide.
At the after-dinner orgy, more plotting takes place between people whose faces are vaguely familiar while Louis is having sweaty sex with Madame de Montespan. Despite her urgings of “Viens, grand garcon” Louis can’t come and strops off in a huff. Sibling rivalry seems to have given le roi erectile dysfunction. Louis visits his old squeeze Henriette, la femme de son frere, who is now starting to talk in a French accent. I’m all for people assimilating other cultures, but it’s a bit confusing when it happens so late in the day. Surprisingly-Good-Philippe gatecrashes the tête-à-tête and tells his brother not to be so paranoid. Henriette tells them to stop squabbling as she is having a baby. No one has a clue who the father is. Such is life in the aristocracy.
Louis is still envious that his frere is down-with-the-builders and sends someone completely useless to negotiate an end to the strike. The useless person is predictably useless. It might have helped if the useless person had talked to Benoit the builder, who has just climbed up a drainpipe to the top of the chateau to snog Sophie. “Non, non, it cannot be,” she protests, before tonguing him.
Elsewhere dans le palais, Fabien (I think it’s him, if it isn’t I’d love to know who it was) is having his leg over with Sophie’s maman (I think it’s her – the horizontal haircut seems to have come undone) while the two Philippes have kissed and made up back in bed. After a brief period of rampant heterosexuality brought on by his exploits in battle, the Surprisingly-Good-Philippe has rediscovered his bisexuality. The psychology textbooks are being written as we watch.
Louis finally decides to confront the builders head on, having promised them a hospital for wounded soldiers – Les Invalides (for the historians among you) – and a gold medal for their service as soldiers and builders for La France. And just to show how much they all mean to him, Louis gives the first medal to his frere because he knows the soldiers think he’s a good sort. Though not all, apparently, as one of them spits in the king’s face.
Later that day, Surprisingly-Good-Philippe and Henriette have a domestic over whether or not to leave Versailles and Louis has un mauvais rêve about being stabbed in the heart by his frere. “You are sick,” says un medecin – though not as ill as this series, which now seems to be at death’s door after yet another episode in which almost nothing happened. Call for the defibrillators!
