Love and Marriage in Prime Time
Charles and Di: The Princess Bride
The 1980s would have been a quiet decade for fans of televised relationship drama had it not been for the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana on July 29, 1981. The wedding, watched by 750 million people around the world, was the television event of the year and kicked off the couple's long and onerous relationship with the press. Never far from the BBC's gaze, the couple fully embraced TV journalism in the early 1990s when, with their relationship squarely in the dumps, Charles and Diana conducted separate televised interviews, broadcasting the details of their marriage's failures and transgressions. While Charles' 1994 interview was a standard mix of royal reserve and political scandal, Diana's interview with Martin Bashir the following year was an exquisite piece of reality television — a perfect blend of teary emotional candor and hot bedroom gossip.