PBS scales the royals’ castle walls

“Windsor Castle: A Royal Year” is a three-part series on PBS that takes you inside the 1,000-year-old weekend home of the queen, where reservations are, like, forget it, unless you’re French President Jacques Chirac. In that case, to commemorate the centenary of the agreement between France and Britain known as the Entente Cordiale, they spend six months planning a banquet for 140, bringing in the West End production of “Les Miserables” as evening entertainment.

“I suppose in the spirit of the Entente Cordiale it’s going to offend everybody,” quips “Les Miz” star Michael Ball.

The world of the royals is an anachronistic offense to some, but I don’t know -- watching this admittedly friendly docu-series, airing over three consecutive Wednesdays beginning tonight, I more got the sense of a benign, slightly odd society living outside time, a much more rarified version of life as a butter-churner in Colonial Williamsburg.

Meet the page of the chambers (he moves furniture), the castle flagman (he stands in a turret, waiting for the queen’s car to show) and the housekeepers who understand that when unpacking a visiting lady’s suitcase you take notes as to the original placement of the clothes so that the garments are repacked in the same manner in which they were found.

There’s something sad and yet ennobling about people whose lives are given over in this way to preserving history through tightly held ritual and seeing to the upkeep of all those treasures and serving her majesty.

“Windsor Castle,” its cameras getting something of an all-access pass, endeavors to show what makes the place tick (literally, as among the staff is a fellow who maintains the many clocks). With its St. George’s Chapel and sprawling grounds, the palace, damaged by fire in 1992, is a major tourist attraction, pumping more than 300 million pounds (about $521 million) into the local economy each year, with proceeds from tourism helping support upkeep of the castle and its royal treasures, according to the series.

It also hosts state dinners, thanks to Prince Philip, duke of Edinburgh, who suggested holding such banquets here instead of in Buckingham Palace. In the first episode, “The Banquet,” President and Madame Chirac are coming to dinner, and the menu the queen signs off on features poached filet of sole with crayfish, beef with wild mushrooms and foie gras, and creme brulee.

I got some party tips (use vinegar and water to get dust off a table, color code your guest list to maximize conversation, such as putting Tony Blair between the French minister of defense and designer Nicole Farhi).

The banquet goes well except for some delays due to protests outside the castle. Can’t a monarch eat in peace?

Anglophiles looking for extensive colloquies with Queen Elizabeth (we’re told she doesn’t like long lunches) or Prince Charles or Camilla or the two young princes will have to settle for the duke of Edinburgh, tooling around the 15,000-acre Great Park in his role as ranger.

Of the yearly event known as the Order of the Garter ceremony, held to celebrate Britain’s oldest and highest order of chivalry, the duke calls it a “nice piece of pageantry” and adds: “Rationally it’s lunatic, but in practice everybody enjoys it.”

Quite, and a touch of marketing also helps. In the third episode, a “branding expert” is brought in to help modernize the gift shop at St. George’s. In a planning meeting, the image of the saint the consultant works up is crisply rejected by the Rev. Canon John White as being “androgynous and uncertain and a bit effete.”

He should see the crowd at the polo matches. A more suitably masculine image is found, leaving the Rev. Canon White only to jest whether the animal rights people will complain about depicting the killing of dragons. Times do change.

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‘Windsor Castle: A Royal Year’

Where: KCET

When: 8 to 9 tonight

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)