Buckingham Palace with Alexander Armstrong

The opening episode transports us back to the late 18th Century, when the building first came into royal hands. Alexander Armstrong discovers that, originally, it wasn't a palace at all – but a private country house built by a man called the Duke of Buckingham. With red brick walls and a mere 40 rooms, "Buckingham House", as it was known, looked nothing like the imposing palace we see today.

But in 1761 the modest country pile caught the eye of King George III and his new bride, Queen Charlotte. The royal lovebirds purchased it as a rural retreat where they could raise a family and throw raucous parties. Raksha Dave gets glammed up, Georgian-style, to find out about the gossip and scandal that dominated the first balls thrown at Buckingham House – meanwhile JJ Chalmers hits the dancefloor to trial some fancy footwork to impress the queen.

Soon, King George and Queen Charlotte started making their mark on their new home. Alexander reveals how the Palace's gardens became home to the first zebra to ever set hoof in England – as well as an impressive underground ice house, the fridge-freezer of its day. But the building still lacked some facilities we consider essential today… toilets. Raksha discovers how one of the most prestigious jobs at Buckingham House involved carrying the king's portaloo – a role rewarded with a princely salary of £240,000, in today's money.

Later in the episode, JJ whips up some surprisingly appetizing Parmesan Ice Cream beloved by Buckingham House's first royal residents, and Raksha sniffs out the stinky yet sustainable solution to emptying the palace's cess pit.

Throughout, a CGI floorplan shows how the royal couple utterly transformed the house with massive extensions. But trouble was on the horizon. Soon madness and greed would drag the palace to the brink of destruction…

This second episode kicks off as King George III and Queen Charlotte enjoy the high-life in their royal home – and ends in the Victorian era, when a new teenage queen takes over the palace.

We begin in the 1780s, as Raksha Dave investigates how the royal residents kept themselves from stinking by taking a bath, Queen Charlotte-style: bizarrely fully clothed. Meanwhile, JJ Chalmers investigates how tough life was for the hidden army of 200 servants toiling "below stairs".

But in 1788, tragedy struck Buckingham House. King George's health took a devastating turn for the worse, and his behaviour spiralled out of control. Alexander discovers how the king's "madness" made life at the royal residence intolerable as it tore his family apart, ending with his devastating death in 1820.

George III's son, also called George, stepped up to the throne. The new King George IV was an arrogant, drunken womaniser and the party-loving monarch splurged millions enlarging "Buckingham House" so massively that the press began referring to it as Buckingham "Palace" for the very first time.

But the showy King wouldn't live to see his grand designs fully completed. Weighing in at 20 stone and having developed a taste for opium, his body finally gave up in 1830. His successor, the straight-talking William IV, hated Buckingham Palace – leaving it uninhabited and unwanted. But Britain was about to get a new queen – the teenage Victoria – who adored the palace from the moment she set eyes on it.

Raksha investigates the filth and squalor that greeted Queen Victoria when she inherited the place, while JJ discovers how the kitchens coped with hosting her lavish wedding breakfast, which included a surprisingly unappetising dish of braised calf glands.

This episode draws to a close in the 1850s, as Victoria cements the importance of Buckingham palace by declaring it the official headquarters of royal business. But soon, heartbreak would cast a shadow over the Palace, throwing its very existence into doubt once again…

In this episode, the palace is in the grip of the Victorian Era – but as the mood swings from joy to heartbreak, what will become of Britain's most iconic royal residence?

We begin in 1845. Life in the palace is a fairytale for loved-up newlyweds Victoria and Albert. But with four tearaway toddlers roaming the palace corridors – and plans for many more children – the fast-growing family demands more space. Victoria adds some 200 rooms to the palace, including an entire new wing at the front and the iconic central balcony. But as the Palace grew bigger, so did the number of people required to keep things running smoothly. JJ Chalmers discovers what life was like for Victoria and Albert's servants, thanks to an extraordinary palace census taken on Sunday 30th of March 1851.

Despite the small army of staff patrolling the corridors, Buckingham Palace was terrifyingly vulnerable to intruders. JJ unlocks the tale of a notorious palace prowler who was rumoured to have stolen Queen Victoria's knickers! Meanwhile, Raksha Dave finds out what was involved in a royal homebirth at the palace – including the curious role of a crowd of bureaucrats, tasked with verifying the baby's bloodline.

Raksha tracks down the first flushing toilet installed at the palace – and JJ struggles to learn Victoria's favourite Waltz. But in the winter of 1861, tragedy struck when Prince Albert died at the age of only 42. Overwhelmed by grief, the queen fled Buckingham Palace, and the building that had given Victoria and Albert so many happy memories was left deserted.

The future of the abandoned palace hung in the balance. Alexander reveals how the government persuaded Victoria to return for the palace's first ever public garden party in 1868. The mood at the palace continued to be sombre, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel - and soon, an unprecedented celebration would bring the palace back to life…

Buckingham Palace witnesses the triumphant, and tragic, final days of the Victorian era, and a new King breathes fresh life into the Palace in the Edwardian era.

A look at how George V's ascension to the throne in 1910 led to the birth of the House of Windsor. JJ Chalmers discovers how the highly traditional king and Queen Mary were sticklers for stuffy royal etiquette - enforcing a strict dress code and dining with bizarrely outdated formality. Alexander reveals how the First World War made the bombing of Buckingham Palace a very real possibility, so the lake in the garden was drained in an extraordinary effort to make it more difficult for enemy planes to spot.

The actor examines the history of the residence from just before the outbreak of the Second World War to the present and looks at what the future holds. Raksha Dave examines a memoir written by George VI's family nanny that lifted the lid on the reality of life in the palace, while JJ Chalmers takes cover in an air-raid shelter just like the one in Buckingham Palace's cellar to find out how it survived the Blitz.