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The private lives of the royals make curious TV viewing, says Bernadette McNulty

A lot of hot air is being blown over two royal docudramas about to screen on television over the next month.

The Queen's Sister - Channel 4's dramatisation of Princess Margaret's life - has had the fur flying over its racy portrayal of the original people's princess, while ITV's version of the Charles and Camilla love story - Whatever Love Means - saw director David Blair walking out and taking his name off the credits before the programme was even finished.

But the Royal Family has got little to worry about - not least because most of them are played by actors much, much better-looking than them.

The makers of The Queen's Sister have made it clear that this is not an extended episode of Bremner, Bird and Fortune, however, by casting people who bear only tenuous physical similarities to the people they are portraying. Apart from the dark hair and air of posh-girl naughtiness, Lucy Cohu looks nothing like Margaret. Although in her heyday Princess Margaret was considered a fine-looking woman, even she could have no issues with Cohu - she is very gorgeous and has the Marilyn Monroe figure to nicely fill a 1950s dress.

The casting in Whatever Love Means is even more complimentary. Laurence Fox makes Charles fanciable as a shy romantic, while Olivia Poulet plays Camilla straight out of the Jilly Cooper school of sexiness: a goer between the sheets, but happy to raise the kids and look after the country pile; foxy in a pair of wellies and in an evening dress.

As Diana, Michelle Duncan has the most difficult act to live up to, but she carries it off with (of course) the downcast eyes and a dedication to blow-drying. The biggest thank-you card, however, should be coming from the Princess Royal, who is rendered an unrecognisable, Jane Seymour-esque beauty by actress Alexandra Moen.

Both of these docudramas also make everyone seem incredibly funny, or clever, and sometimes both.

Margaret gets to run around a country house making pig noises in an upper-class version of spin-the-bottle and delivers lines like: "If you'd seen the chinless toffs I've been paired with you couldn't blame me for wanting someone with a bit of dirt under his fingernails."

David Threlfall gives the Duke of Edinburgh an edge of Machiavellian comic genius, while perversely and delightfully somehow suggesting by his very presence the antics of the dysfunctional family in Shameless.

But, as much as they continue to feed into the fictional allure of royalty, neither programme makes vintage television. The Queen's Sister does try to be a bit more complex. You get to see her briefly kissing her pretty best friend in the middle of a nightclub and tentatively trying a joint in a drunken moment of curiosity, and then endearingly mistaking her shoe for the phone.

Sometimes Margaret is spoilt and selfish and out of touch. She first gets drunk and later stays drunk. She likes attention and hates being a B-list royal. She argues with her husband and has affairs. She gets old and wrinkly and a bit out of touch.

In the background, there is politics and history happening. As Margaret gets older and lonelier, the story gets darker and more depressing.

The problem with The Queen's Sister is not its portrayal of Margaret, however, but the way in which it wants to be both fact and fiction at the same time. As a result, it ends up feeling inconsistent. By casting actors who don't look like the people they are playing, and focusing on the domestic drama of her life, you can forget you are watching a story about Princess Margaret at all.

Once that happens, you lose the voyeuristic interest in her life that made you want to watch in the first place. The Queen is cut entirely from the story to avoid overshadowing it - or perhaps to avoid offence - but the result is to make any story of Margaret's life, and explanation of her problems, seem inconclusive.

While The Queen's Sister doesn't get close enough to its subject, Whatever Love Means feels like a belated wedding present to its central couple, heavy on the sugar coating. And if The Queen's Sister tries too hard to avoid pastiche, Whatever Love Means doesn't try hard enough.

The level of mimicry from most of the cast is so high that it can feel like watching an Alison Jackson video without the interesting satire.

None of which is going to stop people watching. In their thousands. And with Stephen Frears in the process of making a drama about the days after Diana's death, with Helen Mirren as the Queen, there are going to be a lot more royal docudramas to come.