[4] The Queen later had the documentary banned;[5][6] it has not been shown on British TV since 1977[7] and access to view the film was heavily restricted.

[5][6] The film remains available to view on the video-sharing platform YouTube[9] and the digital library website Internet Archive.

[10] Royal Family was commissioned by Elizabeth II to celebrate the investiture of her eldest son, Charles, as Prince of Wales.

[14] It was the idea of William Heseltine, then the royal Press Secretary, and television producer John Brabourne (son-in-law of Lord Mountbatten), who both believed that showing the family's day-to-day life on TV would help to revive public interest in an institution widely seen in the Swinging Sixties as out of touch and irrelevant.

[12] A typical day sets the tone, beginning with an official audience, followed by lunch and an afternoon garden party.

[16] Members of the family are shown eating breakfast, watching television,[17] water-skiing, playing host to the British Olympic team, and having lunch with Richard Nixon, then President of the United States.

[16] The film includes a royal tour of South America and also shows Princess Anne visiting a gas rig in the North Sea.

[15] At the end, the Queen is shown discussing with her family an earlier conversation with the Home Secretary, who had described the then American ambassador, David K. E. Bruce, as a "gorilla", a term Elizabeth said she found "very unkind".

[6] However, she recounted her meeting with the guest by saying, "I stood in the middle of the room and pressed the bell, and the doors opened, and there was a gorilla.

[21] A review in The Times concluded that Cawston's film had given the nation "an intimate understanding of what members of the Royal Family are like as individual people without jeopardising their dignity or losing the sense of distance".

[16] In the 2016 Netflix series The Crown, the episode "Bubbikins" features the filming of the documentary, showing the planning, execution, and reactions.