Netflix, on demand<\/em>
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\u201cMomentum is with us, opinion has changed, the battle is practically won,\u201d Prince Charles (Dominic West) ponders, as he surveys the shifting political fortunes of his future wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles (Olivia Williams), in the penultimate chapter of The Crown<\/em>.<\/p>\n This particular piece of the larger mosaic \u2013 the four hours that make up season six, part one \u2013 of The Crown<\/em> lands solidly. But the story threads are almost too well known: the complex optics of Camilla\u2019s 50th birthday (and the Queen\u2019s non-attendance), the simmering romance between Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Al-Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) and the final eight weeks of Diana\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) with Prince William (Rufus Kampa) and Prince Harry (Fflyn Edwards) in The Crown.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n The most interesting twist in the tale: that creator\/writer Peter Morgan effectively re-dramatises the last of those, rather than creating a natural gap in the final season of The Crown<\/em> to insert his earlier masterwork, the 2006 film The Queen<\/em>, which starred Helen Mirren, and explored elegantly and surgically the devastating aftermath of Diana\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Casting an eye across the larger canvas, however, there are deeper problems. The mystique that shrouded the first seasons of The Crown<\/em>, in part thanks to the smaller volume of historical film from the era, gave it a greater sense of being unknown to the audience. The more recent seasons play like they are ripped from the headlines, which of course they are.<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t be so bad, but The Crown<\/em> must also share the stage with the show\u2019s still performing real-life counterparts: the woe-is-us refugee royals Harry and Meghan, the quaintly eccentric Charles and Camilla and the unmatched outpouring of grief that came in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) in The Crown.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n It is a problem, too, that The Crown<\/em> never delved deeply enough into its best, least familiar asset: the pantheon of bit-players who populate the fringes of the royal soap opera. In the show\u2019s earliest seasons, we got the near-Machiavellian Tommy Lascelles, Victoria Hamilton\u2019s magnificently nuanced Queen Mother and Eileen Atkins\u2019s formidable Queen Mary.<\/p>\n But there was no Princess Michael of Kent, no Princess Alexandra, barely a glimpse of the Duchess of York and by a long measure not enough Princess Anne, particularly during Erin Doherty\u2019s spell as Anne in her young adulthood. (One exception: Gillian Anderson\u2019s stunning turn as Maggie Thatcher in season four.)<\/p>\n Instead, the show delves too deeply into the media-worn story of Charles and Diana, pushing even the Queen (Imelda Staunton) and Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) into the role of bit players, without offering much more than the multitude of telemovies on the same topic, other than casting Dodi Al-Fayed as a barely willing groom-to-be and his father, Mohamed (Salim Daw), in a dubious twist of the historical record, as their matchmaker.<\/p>\n Season six, part one comes with all the scale of past seasons of The Crown<\/em>, but the pieces of the jigsaw fit awkwardly. The romance of Diana and Dodi might have sold tabloid magazines, but the fate of the crown never rested on its outcome. Which makes the season opener seem like it\u2019s forgotten that the crown itself, and not Diana, is number one on the show\u2019s call sheet.<\/p>\n Three queens: Imelda Staunton, Olivia Colman and Claire Foy from The Crown.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n Equally frustrating is that Morgan\u2019s casting of the monarch feels like it has matured as unevenly. Claire Foy, who starred in seasons one and two, bore no actual resemblance to the late Queen, but met the audience\u2019s uncertain memories of the younger Elizabeth with a chin-up-and-steely-faced manner that created a rare television sleight of hand. Her two replacements, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton, have had to play the part against the audience\u2019s established knowledge of them both as actresses in a multitude of prior roles.<\/p>\n The Crown<\/em> has also suffered from the same kind of evolutionary change that has worn the actual monarchy from thick with intrigue to thin and often unremarkable. In the 1950s, when the story of The Crown<\/em> began, the monarchy\u2019s relationship with Britain\u2019s political machinery was more complex and mysterious, played in shadows and whispers.<\/p>\n That complex (and sometimes usefully imperfect) parallel allowed The Crown<\/em> to dance through chapters of modern political history with a sharp eye for small details, elevating some of the lesser players, such as John Lithgow\u2019s Winston Churchill, Alex Jennings\u2019s Duke of Windsor and Jason Watkins\u2019s Harold Wilson, to the most fascinating pieces on the chessboard.<\/p>\n In its modern iteration, however, the royal family is more garden variety soap opera than political thriller, and the show\u2019s storytelling hems too closely to the established media script instead of the untold (or at least, seemingly untold) political backroom plays which supersized it initially from mere streaming telenovela to genuine blue-chip drama.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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