For those who thought that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh might have regarded their children’s romantic travails, and sexual imbroglios, with tutting distaste, The Queen’s Wedding (Channel 4) provided a surprising corrective. They’ve been there, done that, got the crown-logoed T-shirt. Their path to the altar 60 years ago was littered with obstacles; from the moment the 13-year-old future Queen met the 18-year-old Navy lad the sniffing and bitching began.

This was a fascinating if incomplete documentary, showing how times had changed and not changed at all. The British people were hostile to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten from the outset because of his race and background. He was Greek, though from a Royal Family (phew) which had been forced, through war, to up sticks. We didn’t want our future queen to marry a foreigner. (How ironic, given his own famous racially questionable gaffes – “slitty eyes”, et al). The courtiers thought he was “rough, uneducated and not likely to be faithful”. But he had a fairy godfather (well uncle), Lord Mountbatten, who was determined his nephew would marry into the British Royal Family and set about engineering their union.

Today it’s all falling out of Boujis at 3am, but back then the first shot of the couple shows them playing croquet. Philip was 18, Princess Elizabeth 13, but the war came along; he went off and served, she stayed at Windsor Castle and crept towards 18. On VE day, she apparently celebrated, unnoticed, among the crowds. (You always wonder, with anecdotes like that, how she got back into the Palace – rattle a large wrought-iron gate?). By 1943 he was watching her play Aladdin at the Windsor Christmas panto. But George VI, her father, was lonely and liked having her around. And her mother was keen to pair her off with other aristocratic men.

The bigger issue was his family blood: not only was he Greek, he was also part-German. (Well, so were our Royal Family but they had changed their name to Windsor.) His sister had married an SS officer. Lord Mountbatten started lobbying at the highest level to get his nephew naturalised as a British citizen. It seemed he was desperate to wield influence in the Royal Family, to take a central role – but why? Just because he wanted to be where the action was? What was his real goal here, his motivation? It wasn’t clear.

The future Queen doesn’t seem to have cared anything about the political and social storm clouds around her and Philip. Her favourite record to put on the gramophone was People Will Say We’re In Love. They got engaged but it was kept secret and even denied in the newspapers. A poll in 1947 showed only 40 per cent of Britons in favour their marriage. So Lord Mountbatten contrived to have Philip pictured in periodicals playing cricket and doing lots of British stuff.

When their engagement was announced, Britain was in the grip of postwar austerity and the hullabaloo of a royal wedding was seen as frivolous, and so the couple made a great play of making it a “wedding for the people”. In the end, it seemed Britain wanted a bit of frivolity to offset the surrounding gloom. The crowds turned out to see the state coach and a dress of beads and satin.

But behind the fairytale ending was he a womaniser? How instrumental was the Queen herself in demanding the right to marry the man she loved? What was their romance like? How did the State finally come on side? So many questions were left unanswered – a testament to the Queen’s formidable grip on her personal privacy even today.

Jimmy McGovern’s The Street (BBC One) has a problem: there are so many momentous, life-changing events going on, the houses will inevitably crumple and implode as at the end of Poltergeist. Last night’s episode was beautifully written and clever: two mates, on a wild night out, end up in an out of control situation. One beats up a taxi driver who later dies. The wrong one is subsequently punished. The mates are the sons of sisters whose relationship is irrevocably changed. That’s the thing with The Street: someone stoops to pick up a milk bottle and their life is irrevocably changed, someone drives their car to the shops and their life is irrevocably changed. It’s a street to live on only for those with a high drama threshold.

Out of the box

— Quite possibly the best dating show ever, A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila, features 15 straight men and 15 lesbians competing for the hand of the bisexual, minxy Ms Tequila. This they do while all sharing a mansion. Naturally passions run high: two contestants – one straight man and one lesbian – have already gone a bit bonkers when rejected by Tila.

— Kelly Brook will carry on in Strictly Come Dancing after her father Kenneth, 57, died of cancer. A spokesman for Brook said she would continue just as her “father would have wanted”.

— Billie Piper will reprise the role of Sally Lockhart in the upcoming BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Shadow in the North. Piper also played Lockhart in Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke last Christmas.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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