Diana: The endless story

Diana Princess Of Wales, Prince Harry and Prince William visiting The 'Thorpe Park' Amusement Park. Photo / Getty Images

Wherever you watch, she is there in all her tragic glory, writes Greg Bruce.

Of all the questions that will be asked and answered in the upcoming onslaught of television programming about Princess Diana, who died in a 1997 car accident - or did she? - what can we honestly say hasn't already been asked or answered?

Everybody knows the part played in her death by this type of exhaustive, wall-to-wall coverage, this insatiable thirst for closeness to her life, which is also being fed right now by this very piece of writing that probably thinks it's casting a light on the issue.

When we were all up in arms in 1997 about how the paparazzi had driven her to her death, did we think there would still be so much hounding 20 years later with this ceaseless rounding up of talking-head friends, family and increasingly distant social attachments going over, once again, some of the most difficult and upsetting parts of her life and horrible death?

On this, the 20th anniversary of her death, Prime will be the premier televisual provider of Diana-related content, with five separate shows, the first of which aired last week and was called Diana: Her Story and the next of which, The Story of Diana, airs tomorrow night.

Prime's also showing, at various times over the next week-and-a-half, Diana and the Paparazzi; Diana: Seven Days that Shook the World; Diana: The Day the World Cried. On the Living Channel there will be the three-night conspiracy-theory flavoured Princess Diana: Tragedy or Treason? The History Channel has Diana: 20 Years on. TVNZ's showing Diana: 7 Days and the boy-follows-in-mother's-footsteps tale Prince Harry in Africa. Three, which has already screened one Diana programme this month has Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy.

The National Geographic Channel will screen Diana: In Her Own Words, which is not the same thing as the controversial C4 production Diana In Her Own Words, which has not been scheduled for broadcast here, at least not yet.

Amid it all, there may be something new or revelatory. Let's be generous and say it'll be

1 per cent of the revisiting, rehashing, speculating, revising whole.

"Even when you died / Oh the press still hounded you" Elton John sang of Marilyn Monroe in Candle in the Wind, words that were no longer there when he rewrote the song for his performance at Diana's funeral.

How many insights can be left into a life so relentlessly exposed when it still existed, then remorselessly exhumed for re-examination on every half-assed anniversary since? Whatever the answer, it's enough for at least the 12 separate television programmes mentioned here, some of which have more than one part, with enough content left over for scheduling if ratings suggest that may be worthwhile.

She was beloved by millions, and those millions wanted continually to see her face, her smile, her words and deeds - to know what she was up to, what life was like for her. And they probably still do.