2024-01-01 05:50:00
Three queens, from left to right: Olivia Colman, Imelda Staunton and Claire Foy in The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
The Crown has been a fast-paced, marathon series that spans nearly 60 years of history in six seasons of serious drama and frivolous gossip. Sometimes moving quickly through the decades, other times lumbering through the minutes, the show has been destination television since 2016, a sumptuous, low-stakes detour in an era of bewildering turbulence.
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Does the series have a deeper meaning beyond being an impressive feat of expensive storytelling? It’s hard to know.
As we contemplate a future in which we will be forced to evaluate new royal happenings without the help of The Crown, it’s time to award the first (and last) annual Crownie Awards.
The Crown always oscillated between highlighting actors’ resemblance to their real-life counterparts (Alex Jennings, eerily channeling the Duke of Windsor) and seemingly not caring too much regarding it (Dominic West, evidently better looking and more competent than his character, Prince Charles).
Luther Ford as Prince Harry and Ed McVey as Prince William in season six of The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
Still, it was a shock to see Prince Henry in the final season. Interpreted by Luther FordHenry looks like a bitter, charmless Ron Weasley with strange Prince Valiant-style bangs.
The Crown often dressed its actors in replicas of their characters’ best-known clothing, which gave a nice sense of verisimilitude. (See, for example, the wedding dresses worn by Princess Elizabeth, Lady Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker-Bowles.)
Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in the fifth season of The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
As it happened in real life, the best outfit of all was Christina Stambolian’s stunning dress that Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) wore in season 5, to a party in Kensington Gardens on the same night that Prince Charles appeared on television and confessed that he had been unfaithful with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
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It was exciting to see Debicki’s entrance in that dress: fitted, off-the-shoulder, asymmetrical hem, and a chiffon train that flowed mischievously from the waist; an impressive recreation of that unforgettable moment.
The Crown was peppered with cutting comments and snobbish disdains, and the best insults came in series three, when the Duke of Windsor briefly returns to London from his unhappy Parisian exile for his brother’s funeral. He asks for money following his family threatens to cut off his allowance and claims that his wife, formerly known as Wallis Simpson, should receive her Royal Highness honorific due to her close status to him. the royalty.
Derek Jacobi in the third season of The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
No one is particularly understanding, and that hardens their hearts. England, he writes to Wallis, is a “cold, sunless hell.”
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“And what a collection of ice-veined monsters my family is,” he continues. “How cold, bitter, dull and plump.”
Who is this kind old man who radiates benevolent wisdom in the final episodes, asking people how they feel, remembering his days as a young father, and praising Queen Elizabeth for successfully hiding “the torment you have been through” in his wedding speech to Carlos and Camilla?
Jonathan Pryce and Imelda Staunton in the final season of The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
Surely it can’t be Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce), the queen’s cantankerous husband, who in real life had a reputation for being an irritable grump who enjoyed his own hurtful attitude. (“You’re a woman, right?” Felipe once said to a Kenyan woman offering him a gift. Speaking to an Aboriginal leader in Australia, he asked, “Do you guys still throw spears at each other?”) .
Previous seasons of The Crown showed Philip’s rougher, more frustrated side, and there were some flashes of the old grumpy spirit in the later episodes, such as when he tells an inept official, “For God’s sake, take the damn picture already.” !” But for the most part he looked like a wise old patriarch.
Kate Middleton’s mother, Carole, has always shown herself to be a model of elegant discretion and admirable good character. She radiates an air of helpful maternal enthusiasm and a supportive smile for her daughter and her son-in-law. She never seemed eager, at least not in public, to stand out or take advantage of her royal connections.
Eve Best como Carole Middleton en The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
It was therefore disconcerting to see her portrayed in season six as a humorless social climber whose only goal was to push her daughter to catch Prince William.
Middleton is undoubtedly happy that Kate and William ended up together. Perhaps, as Tina Brown wrote, she did orchestrate Kate’s decision to go to the University of St. Andrews, where Prince William had enrolled, with the goal of putting her daughter in the prince’s path.
But the show’s depiction of Carole (Eve Best) reacting with utter dissatisfaction when Kate brings home her non-William boyfriend, a harmless aristocrat named Rupert, and then severely scolding Kate for not catching the prince? That seems not only unlikely, but also unfair.
Camilla’s job on The Crown is to be cheerful, supportive and modest, no matter how tortured and miserable Carlos is and how often he makes her listen to his complaints and moans over the phone regarding his problems. Calling her on the eve of her wedding, he excitedly speculates regarding the possibility of her mother abdicating and ceding the throne to him.
Olivia Williams en The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
“Just think regarding the kids,” Camilla (Olivia Williams) tells him, swallowing her dismay at the prospect so as not to make him uncomfortable. But, as he told her in the famous conversation of “tampon scandal” in 1989, “your greatest achievement is loving me.”
(The runner-up in this category is Kate Middleton, played by Meg Bellamy, who also spends a lot of time on the phone where she listens more than she talks.)
The final season featured a multitude of ghosts who materialized from the ethereal world to soothe, advise, and declaim the various living characters. This device worked well when Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton, in the latest version of the queen) was visited by the ghosts of herself in the past, played by Clare Foy and Olivia Colman; they served to highlight the poignancy of the passage of time in her long life.
Khalid Abdalla and Elizabeth Debicki as Dodi and Diana in The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
But did we really need to see Dodi’s ghost and Diana’s ghost easing the guilt of those they left behind? No.
Who knows how the royal family actually talks to each other behind closed doors. But it seems unlikely that their real-life conversations would include as many long, expository comments regarding royal protocol, precedent, duty, and history, “brackets that look like they were copied from Wikipedia,” as they do. wrote Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.
“What would he know regarding Alfred the Great, the Rod of Equity and Mercy, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror or Henry VIII?” Queen Mary shouts to Elizabeth in the first season, speaking of Prince Philip, who comes from the exiled Greek royal family. “It is the Church of England, my dear, not the Church of Denmark or Greece.”
The Crown’s characters also had a habit of articulating their emotions and exposing their interpersonal conflicts in ways that would be embarrassing even in 21st-century American families, let alone among repressed and rigid British aristocrats of the past.
Un retrato familiar en The Crown (The Crown/Netflix)
“Brother has really turned once morest brother,” King Edward tells his younger brother, the future King George, as the two argue over Edward’s abdication in season three.
In the same season, Prince Philip requests a private meeting with American astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins at Buckingham Palace. He’s going through some sort of identity crisis. “I haven’t been able to achieve the things I would have liked,” he tells the bewildered guests.
What a study in contrasts between Queen Elizabeth—so responsible and overwhelmed by history—and her sister, Princess Margaret, who seems to have been put on earth to have passionate and ill-advised love affairs, to smoke and drink excessively, and to party. late into the night in Mustique. “I’d rather die than exercise,” Margarita says in season six, when Isabel suggests ways she might cheer herself up following a series of strokes.
Viola Prettejohn and Beau Gadson as young Isabel and Margaret (The Crown/Netflix)
But the two are shown sharing a rare intimacy and deep affection. “Hello, you,” they greet each other, and Isabel is a tender and affectionate nurse to her sick sister. Their last scene together comes at the end of an exuberant flashback to the night they slipped away to celebrate with the crowd on Victory Day in 1945.
At the end of the evening, the two princesses return to Buckingham Palace and Elizabeth asks Margaret, now the older version, played by Lesley Manville, if she is going in.
“I’m afraid not,” replies Margarita. “But I will always be by your side, no matter what.” It’s the most moving moment of the entire series.
© The New York Times 2023
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