Ordinary people | 31 January 2013

There was little reason to be curious about David or Jackie Siegel at the beginning of Queen of Versailles (Monday, BBC4): he is the King of Timeshare and she is his Beauty Queen; they are building a palace in Florida, and modelling it on Versailles; it will be the biggest private home in America, when it is finished, and the Siegels will squeeze into it with their colossal fortune, their fleet of staff, their eight children and their bouquet of powder-puff dogs. ‘My husband deserves this house,’ says Jackie. ‘It’ll be like a lifetime achievement.’ There didn’t seem a whole lot more to find out.

But then, after 30 minutes of screen time, came the crash: September 2008. Siegel’s fortune dissolved, credit became debt, income was slashed and employees were sent home. ‘Versailles’ — the incomplete fantasy — was put on hold.

Lauren Greenfield’s camera, however, was permitted to keep rolling and the Siegels’ losses became the film’s rather slippery gains: slings and arrows, swings and roundabouts, tragedy, comedy, pomp and absurdity, the mighty and the ridiculous, the awkward and (if you’ll pardon my bug-eyed voyeurism) the awfully compelling.