This article contains spoilers for series five of The Crown.
As the fifth and penultimate series of The Crown opens, the Royal family are all at sea… quite literally. It's 1991, and while Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip take the royal yacht Britannia to their Balmoral home, Prince Charles and Princess Diana are cruising around the Amalfi coast on what the press have been briefed is a “second honeymoon.” As everyone now knows, it was no such thing, and in fact, their doomed marriage was sailing into ever dicier waters.
In an even less subtle metaphor, the ailing Britannia becomes a substitute for the Queen herself as the Royals and the government tussle over who should pay for her repairs. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise she’s falling apart,” remarks Prince Philip over breakfast, just as The Sunday Times publishes a poll suggesting the public thinks the queen should abdicate to make way for Charles. “She’s a creature of another age…In many ways, she is obsolete.”
Exploring the relevance of the monarchy itself – including a fictionalised scene between Charles and Prime Minister John Major that has already stirred up controversy – is a valiant but ultimately futile attempt by creator Peter Morgan to convince audiences that this series is about anything other than Charles and Diana. In the first episode, it's the escalating tensions between the battling couple which prove most engaging as the gulf between them grows, their children are caught in the crossfire, and the relationship is reduced to stage-managed PR opportunities.
It's almost here!
Overall this fifth instalment of the royal story takes a while to get going, inching too slowly towards the fireworks we know are to come and casting around for other, less shiny things to catch our interest, like Philip’s close friendship with Penny Knatchbull, relations with Russia and the backstory of the al-Fayed family.
At least there is the novelty and distraction of a third and final casting overhaul, including Imelda Staunton as Elizabeth II, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Dominic West as Prince Charles, Elizabeth Debicki as Diana and Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret. They are solid, if not stellar, performances that just about steer clear of caricature (although all are upstaged by the bizarreness of seeing Johnny Lee Miller insufficiently de-handsomed as John Major).
“The closer The Crown gets to converging with our current timeline, the more of the story is already familiar.”
But Staunton’s stately yet stubborn Queen suffers the same fate as her real-life counterpart: dependably carrying out the responsibilities of her public office, many of which are quite dull, doesn’t exactly make for much excitement despite the rocky events of this time period. The early nineties saw the royals face their self-described “annus horribilis”, in which two of the Queen’s children – Prince Andrew and Princess Anne – divorced their spouses, Charles and Diana officially separated, and Windsor Castle was badly damaged by a fire.
But ever since the show started, these years were the most highly anticipated, primarily due to the “War of the Wales”, and no amount of time spent with Elizabeth stoically preaching about duty will avert the inevitability of art imitating life as viewers lap up the Charles and Diana drama while rolling their eyes every time the camera pans back to the relative dryness of the Queen herself who becomes something of a peripheral character here.
And how they matched up to the real thing.
In tracking the most public of marital implosions, season five of The Crown picks up the pace, taking in all the box office moments from the Andrew Morton biography to “tampongate” to the revenge dress and Martin Bashir’s Panorama interview. But while these events prove the most gripping of the series, the closer The Crown gets to converging with our current timeline, the more of the story is already familiar. As Elizabeth II’s reign progressed, so the public’s access to the Royal Family increased (however carefully managed that access was). Rather than archive footage and the odd infamous photograph, The Crown is now recreating events that we have already seen from multiple angles, both as they happened and many times since. As such, it requires a punchier script to convince us that what we’re seeing here is an unearthing of the humanity beneath the artifice.
“Where the early series could rely on the luxe nostalgia of being a period drama, it feels as though there should be a stronger point of view to retreading these more contemporary years.”
If Morgan wishes the central question of the series to be about who the monarchy serves as an institution, he perhaps unwittingly also raises that of who is served by The Crown as a show. And for all the headlines and debate The Crown generates, there is something rather sedate about how the whole thing walks a careful line through the middle ground. Where the early series could rely on the luxe nostalgia of being a period drama, it feels as though there should be a stronger point of view to retreading these more contemporary years.
While royalists will be riled up by the perceived disrespect of creative liberties being taken with the “truth” (as though this wasn’t always a work of fiction), The Crown treads too carefully around its subjects, reluctant to nail colours firmly to any one mast. Whoever your loyalties lay with ahead of watching (including if that was resolutely in the camp of abolishing the monarchy altogether), they will likely stay that way on watching this series which could easily be interpreted to suit the views of whoever is watching.
As high-budget cosplay, The Crown is unmatched, and it is still a jaw-dropping visual spectacle, but as compelling TV capable of sustaining itself over ten hours, it’s grown a little stale.
