Netflix THE CROWN

It’s hard to write history when it’s still current.

I wouldn't call them flawless but Season 1 and 2 were the best. Claire Foy was terrific and Lithgow was a superb Churchill....far better than Gary Oldman who won an Oscar for his bafflingly bad performance in The Darkest Hour.

I like Olivia Colman but she's a bit too middle class to make a believable Liz II. I thought Season 3 was a bit clunky and enjoyed Season 4 more because Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin were great as Charles and Diana. And, while it was rather a large performance, I also enjoyed Gillian Anderson's Maggie Thatcher.

Five was a bit of a turd. Staunton plays everything as an angry little turd. But, I really liked Elizabeth Debicki as Diana. The episodes focusing on her were the best. And, Khalid Abdalla was also good as Dodi.

They never got the Queen Mother right. She never had anything to do and all three actresses were not good casting.

I liked 2 of the three Margarets. Leslie Manville and Vanessa Kirby both managed to capture Margaret...I didn't much care for Helena Bonham-Carter's version...it just seemed like it was HBC in a tiara. It was also weird she was obviously older than Olivia Colman when she's supposed to be the younger sister.

As for Phillip, I really liked Matt Smith and thought he really captured Phillip's cunty charm.. I thought Tobias Menzies was a bit of a snooze and I don't really understand why he won an Emmy for that meh performance. Jonathan Pryce really didn't have much to do...and wasn't that interesting with what he had.

Season 1 and 2 were the best because it was longer ago and focused on young Elizabeth and her relationships with Charles and Margaret and her prime ministers.

But, as the show progresses through time, you lost that original focus. Elizabeth and Philip just drifted into a rather bland "arrangement"....the show was never going to dig into Phillip's likely affairs. Margaret's story just gets sadder and sadder and just repeats itself a lot. She became an unlikeable, drunken old bitter cunt. And, the Prime Ministers were less interesting (until Thatcher) as Britain slowly lost its place of power in the world.

Then, Charles and Diana really take over the story...in the last 3 seasons, Elizabeth didn't really have much to do. Just like in real life, Diana starts to dominate the story. And, the show chose not to really do much with Anne, Andrew or Edward....which I think was a mistake especially since they had two good actresses playing Anne. She really deserved at least ONE episode devoted to her; it was so odd they ignored her attempted kidnapping which would have made for scene in an Anne centric episode.

I finished watching all 6 seasons about a month ago.

I do agree that the first 2 seasons were the best. Clair Foy was radiant as a young Elizabeth.

The other two were too fuddy duddie and just looked old. I actually did skip the parts where Waity Katie and William were dating or whatever it was that they were doing.

It was sad to see that dad Al Fayed caused the deaths of those people. He sicced the paparazzi on them to get attention for his son and it backfired spectacularly on him. It was sad that the fucking royal assholes didn’t even acknowledge him or his son in that accident.

It didn’t really make those people look good in any way, shape or form. I know it’s a highly fictionalized account of their lives but the producers must have done some research and looked at public records and accounts of what happened throughout their pampered lives.

The first Margaret was also so, so good. She captured the joie de vivre that the real Margaret must have had. By the time Helena played her, she was just a sad, empty person pretending that her life was still so glamorous and amazing.

I did also love the last scene, where all three Elizabeths gathered together.

I also wonder if she had really thought to give up the throne for Charles when he got married to that homewrecker.

OP, Season 4 was actually the most critically acclaimed of all the seasons, so I'm curious you didn't like it very much.

I agree Seasons 5 and 6 were big disappointments.

I thought the most underrated performances were Anton Lesser as the humiliated Harold Macmillan in Season 2 and Jason Watkins as the kindly Harold Wilson, the only PM the Queen treated as a true confidant (although she hugely respected Churchill) in Seasons 3 & 4. I also thought Johnny Lee Miller was surprisingly good as the bland but sympathetic John Major in Season 5.

Yeah, Season 4 was the pinnacle of the series. If anything 5 and 6 were doomed to disappoint because 4 was such a hard act to follow.

I wouldn't call Season 4 the pinnacle but it was highly entertaining as the Charles-Diana Soap Opera took off. And, the tense dynamic between Elizabeth and Thatcher.

It also featured the stupid "Margaret Finds Out They Have Retarded Cousins" episode which was just a blatant "well, we signed Helena Bonham Carter so she has to have her 'own' episode in Season 4" or else she won't sign on.

With Seasons 5 and 6, the series's focus on Elizabeth II got lost because the showrunner was much more interested in showing Charles and Diana break up (which felt too recent for me to be worth revisiting) and so the queen didn't get much to do. Worse, Staunton was unable to bring much shading to the part. One of the best things about Foy's and Colman's portrayals was that they made her many-sided: she could be devastating when she came down hard on people who wanted her good opinion, but she could also be enormously warm and kind to those she loved, and she could even be quite funny (which Colman was really good at showing). Staunton's portrayal wasn't shaded enough--her queen was mostly restricted and sour. She was never funny, and only rarely got to be vulnerable. The only really good episode she had was "Ipatiev House," where to her shock Philip confessed to her he didn't like spending lots of time with her because she wasn't intellectual or interesting enough for him.

I warched it all until i got stuck in the last season, the incredibly boring episode with the sullen William at school. It didn’t help that the previous episode had the ghost of Diana.

Focusing on the Charles and Diana story too much was, i think, a mistake. Like in previous seasons they should have had some episodes glimpsing some historical moments outside the domestic parrying of this overrated couple.

I was surprised by the quality of the first seasons, I think in no small part because the distance of time allowed the series to personalize history, to fill in with details or plausibilities that made a whole story from what most of us knew in small details and disconnected facts. In later seasons, the nearness of the time period worked in the opposite way, raising arguments or questions where the earlier had provided interesting connective tissue. That, in combination with an older, grumpier, rather sour queen and a capable but misplaced actress and a misdirection in focus on the Charles and Diana Show, made for later seasons that, overall, went to shit.

The Crown was at its best as a window into history. The closer we got to our own time, the less interesting it became. A soap opera really.

The final season was dire. With randomly invented unnecessary storylines. Yes it was a real surprise the women who spent 50+ years saying she wasn't going to abdicate, decided not to abdicate. Also probably wasn't helped the old girl died before the final one was out so they were a lot more restricted with how respectfully they had to treat her. Was a good final scene though. Don't know if its true and certainly don't have the patience to check. But I read she takes 70 steps out of the abbey for each year of the Queens reign.

Starting with season 3, there were so many events that should have bern portrayed, but were ignored or glossed over.

Anne fighting her attempted kidnappers and participating in the Olympics.

The implosion of the York marriage-Andrew was Elizabeth’s favorite child; Fergie and Diana were frenemies; Fergie commercializing her title because she owed too much money; Fergie reportedly coming down to breakfast at Sandringham, to find the family looking at pictures of her getting her toes sucked in the tabloids.

Paul Burrell’s trial and the Queen stopping it with her sudden recollection at the last minute of a conversation she had with Burrell.

The It’s a Royal Knockout disaster.

Edward dropping out of military service.

Diana and the gym photographs.

I would have preferred seeing these discussed, instead of the episode about the Al Fayed backstory, for example.

Also, I think the Queen Mother was not given enough screen time. She was one of the biggest influences on Elizabeth’s reign, but she starts to disappear from the story after season 3.

It was really weird to me Prince Edward only had one substantive scene in the entire series, and we never even got to see his wife (who had been married to Edward for several years by the point the series ended in 2005). Other than that he did get the best one-liner in the entire show ("That was impressively cunty") in a scene where he had no other lines.

He's certainly not the Queen's most likeable child, but he was a huge part of her life.

R1 is correct!!

The "Prince Charles& Diana story" was a BOMB going off, you couldn't stop it!!

It became the "Princess Diana story" until her death in O8/31/1997& still is a major part of the royal family (even though "they" would love to ignore it).

The last season of The Crown was terrible because it was still happening. The last episode of Season 6 was great with the 3 Queen Elizabeth's.

One of my favorite minor/major characters on The Crown was Tommy Lascelle, played by Pip Torrens. Incredibly ruthless person with regards to the monarchy.

I enjoyed all the seasons. I didn’t know much about Queen Liz’s history. Very interesting to see her witness history rather than make it

I also agree they overdid the Charles/Diana Saga at the expense of doing stories about other family members but you really couldn't do much with Elizabeth herself....she just did her job. Which isn't really that interesting. So it ended up just looking exasperated at what her children (well, really only Charles) were up to.

[quote] And, the show chose not to really do much with Anne, Andrew or Edward....which I think was a mistake especially since they had two good actresses playing Anne. She really deserved at least ONE episode devoted to her; it was so odd they ignored her attempted kidnapping which would have made for scene in an Anne centric episode.

This really annoyed me. Season three was such a snooze - there was more than enough room for the attempted kidnap of Anne. But no, apparently we needed an episode of Philip having a mid-life crisis over the moon landing instead.

Also, I found it odd that the entire series ignored the close relationship between Charles and the Queen Mother. She was such an important figure in Charles's life, so much that so that Sophie said Charles was waiting for his grandmother's death to marry Camilla. So much of the show was about what it means to be a monarch, the transfer of power over generations, etc. A queen dowager trying to mould a future king would have been entirely in-keeping with the theme.

Two main things:

(1) Claire Foy was truly perfect and, to the larger international audience, somewhat unknown, so she really claimed that role.

and

(2) Those days, despite being well documented, are farther back in history, and the deep dive into what might have happened behind closed doors (and away from newspaper pages or cameras) was more compelling.

I actually found Season 3 more rickety - it felt like it took half the season for the new cast to adjust, but then once they did it hummed along and Season 4 was even better.

But agree, 5 and 6 were serviceable at best and execrable in several spots.