The Crown is oddly appealing for a show that chronicles the family drama within an institution that swathes of the country wish didn’t exist. It borders on absurd that, in the current economic climate, so many people are paying their Netflix subscriptions, logging in, and watching episode after episode produced on an extortionate budget, about a family using tax-payer money to live a wildly unobtainable lifestyle. Why do we do it?
Because it’s good television.
With the release of season 6 part 1, finally, this moral quandary can come to an end….
The Crown has gone bad.
It’s a bizarre move for a show dedicated to charting the reign of Elizabeth II and the various sociopolitical difficulties of the time to switch track and desperately try to rebrand itself as a Diana biopic. Not least because we already have multiple Diana biopics and documentaries, but try the crown does – presumably in the name of convenience. There’s enough spectacle and drama in the Diana/Charles/Camilla triangle, and the following relentless pursuit of a cast-out Diana by the paparazzi, to pad out season after season. Perhaps that’s the reason for another of the shows more recent pitfalls: pacing issues.
The newest half-season drop consists of four episodes that span eight weeks. This is not a lot of ground to cover for a show that averages out at a decade per season. Heaven forbid they use this extra time to delve into their characters, to allow Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth the same screen time as her predecessors, to explore her internal state as she ages, and becomes aware of the push back against the notion of a constitutional monarchy. The terrifying tenure of Tony Blair and his new labour is briefly touched on but is bewilderingly (and maybe thankfully) insignificant. How did the end of conservative rule in Parliament affect a conservative institution like the royal family? We will never know – it was cut, seemingly in exchange for the royal families’ own interpersonal politics. Will the Queen accept Charles and Camila’s relationship? Can Jonathan Pryce ever deliver Prince Philip’s lines with different intonation? (although it might forsake the accuracy in his portrayal of a man that was, briefly, suspected to have been operated Weekend at Bernie’s-style in the years before his death). These conflicts are further excised to make room for Dodi Fayed’s enormous yacht.
We’re doing three and a half episodes of Diana hanging out with Dodi, staring wistfully into the middle-distance, tilting her head and talking about how she wants to be reunited with “her boys” (it’s unclear whether Diana remembers the names of said boys, or whether she thinks they are some kind of two-headed conjoined entity).
The crown exploits Diana’s death by foreshadowing it at every opportunity, does its best to back-pedal a less-than-complimentary portrayal of Charles from previous seasons (do you suppose this has anything to do with him now being the sitting monarch?) and condemns the media for sweeping past Diana’s important charity work with landmines (and here-absent publicity work during the AIDS crisis) in favour of reporting on her love life whilst neglecting to give adequate screen-time to a portrayal of Diana’s charitable work in favour of discussing her love life. In fact when Diana does start a conversation about her passion for helping communities affected by unactivated landmines with Dodi it suddenly takes a rapid u-turn into her complaining about her marriage and asking him if he likes her legs… just incase we had any doubts about where the writer’s priorities are.
In lieu of the therapist the family is so obviously in need of we have ‘ghost Diana’ and briefly ‘ghost Dodi’, who appear to the significant figures in their life as apparitions, figments of their subconscious, to walk them through the character growth that should have taken them an entire season in under five minutes. Ghost Diana says to Charles: “Thank you for how you were in the hospital. So raw, broken and handsome. I’ll take that with me” – Prompting the viewer to vomit on their laptop (you’d think this would have stopped me being able to submit a review but I was so determined to inform the masses of the horror I was witnessing that the text simply appeared on the page before me. I assume this is also how the dialog appeared to the writers also, they can’t have been fully sentient committing these lines to the page).
Tune back in for the second half on December 14th for six more episodes, distastefully dramatising William and Kate’s university years and Harry’s military enrolment whilst “The Boys” grapple with their grief over losing their mother and the difficulties of living life in the public eye… or… you know… don’t.
“TIME cover Mar 11-1996 Princess Diana.” by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0.