Great series, more bold than the American one, as it strongly attacks the rising and (at the time) fashionable neo-liberalism.
One thing bugged me. Why did the king have to retire? Is it really in the hands of the PM in Britain to sack a king?! Seems a bit odd for me.
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Thanks for the explanation--it's very clarifying, especially for Americans to whom the ins and outs and intricacies of the role of the monarch in Britain aren't always totally clear.
It helps me to understand the sneaking feeling I got in watching TPTK that Charles-manqué isn't totally a good guy, no matter how sympathetically he's portrayed. In some sense, he's almost as bad as Urquhart, in that what he seeks is, as you say, something of a benevolent tyranny; Urquhart's simply more straightforward in what he's seeking, the King allows himself to be rather misled by his own more benign feelings.