Victoria season 2 episode 4 review: Faith, Hope & Charity

In one of its best episodes to date, Victoria addresses the Irish potato famine, and turns in a beautiful and solemn hour of television.

For a moment at the start of this week’s Victoria, it almost seemed as though the show would dip into melodrama. However, the show turned in the kind of television that leaves you absolutely breathless with its strong use of music and plotting.

“What could be gloomier than that?” Victoria asks after a sermon about the plagues of Egypt. The audience already knows, because her scenes are juxtaposed with those from Ireland, showing us the potato famine as well as ongoing conflicts between the Protestant Church of Ireland and the Catholic community. And so it is that Ireland is shown primarily in drab grays, with shots of mothers who have died, leaving crying children behind as thunder rumbles.

This is our introduction to Robert Traill, a young clergyman who writes a letter that makes it to the newspapers — and to, by extension, Victoria. However, she has to deal with stereotypes from the government and resistance from Peel. She works around things by calling Traill to the palace himself.

Now, for what it’s worth, the episode shows that Peel doesn’t believe he has much room to maneuver here: he can’t help the Irish unless he tries to help other poor people in other parts of the kingdom, which means he’ll end up losing his support. Traill’s in the same position — trying to work his way up in the church while also helping people.

But the way Victoria makes her point to Peel brings together the queen and the woman in an amazing way: she brings him into the nursery, showing him a crying Alice, her latest child, and giving him a seriously impassioned speech. For the first time, the two of them actually understand each other.

At the end of the day, Traill and Peel end up choosing principle. Traill dies for it. Peel faces opposition.

Additionally, the show manages to actually tie together the overarching plot upstairs and down because of Miss Cleary being Irish and needing more money for her family back home. It gives Francatelli a moment to be a decent guy and give her a watch to sell, and it’s also how most of the servants turn against Penge for bullying her.

But that’s not the only instance of disease — and here’s your historical lesson of the episode. While unpacking Ernest’s bags for him, Brodie finds some mercury chloride, which is a treatment for syphilis. That’s most of Ernest’s storyline for the episode: seeking additional treatments in the form of mercury. The other part is the return of his lady love, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, after the death of her husband in a terrible accident. It mostly fits in with the idea of trying to fix a problem that’s huge and could lead to death, but it still feels like a mismatch since he’s mostly trying to help himself, not someone else.

However, on the whole, this episode actually handles some seriously dark topics without heavy-handedness — not even with the text at the end that explains how many people were actually afflicted by the potato famine. “Faith, Hope & Charity” deserves a place close to the top of the list of Victoria episodes in terms of quality.

Bullet points:

• Paget and Drummond exchange some very lingering looks during their brief scene together, even though they’re on opposing sides of the debate.
• The rendition of the show’s theme when Victoria starts writing a letter to Traill is beautiful and somber.
• Albert mostly focuses on the sewers and puts a bathroom in the servants’ quarters, making the most terrible throne pun in the process. Okay, I’m also a huge fan of puns, though, so I couldn’t help but be amused.
• The song at the end of the episode is a version of “Old Skibbereen.”

Next: 15 times we actively rooted against love on TV

What did you make of this week’s Victoria?