The Crown to be extended for sixth season on Netflix

Imelda Staunton will take over as the Queen in the fifth series. Photograph: AP

The Crown to be extended for sixth season on Netflix

Royal drama was due to end after series five but show’s creator says it will continue

Sarah Marsh

@sloumarsh

Published onThu 9 Jul 2020 18.45 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jul/09/the-crown-to-be-extended-sixth-season-netflix

The critically acclaimed royal drama The Crown will not abdicate just yet: the Netflix production that was due to end after the fifth series is to be extended for another season.

The show’s creator and writer, Peter Morgan, has confirmed it will continue, after fans were left disappointed that more episodes were not on the cards.

In January fans were told the show, watched by more than 73m households worldwide, would end with series five, but Morgan has now said that to do justice to the “richness and complexity” of the story he will “go back to the original plan and do six seasons”.

He said: “To be clear, series six will not bring us any closer to present day – it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”

The sixth and final season will go into the early 2000s, but the number of episodes or exact storylines it will cover is not yet known.

The fourth series of the drama, featuring Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher and Olivia Colman returning as the Queen, airs later this year, and will include the introduction of Diana, Princess of Wales, played by Emma Corrin.

Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vice-president of original content, said: “The Crown keeps raising the bar with each new season. We can’t wait for audiences to see the upcoming fourth season, and we’re proud to support Peter’s vision and the phenomenal cast and crew for a sixth and final season.”

In January Netflix announced that Imelda Staunton would take over the role of the Queen from Colman in the fifth series. Colman replaced Claire Foy to make her debut as the monarch in the third series, which launched in November 2019.

The Phantom Thread star Lesley Manville will play Princess Margaret in the fifth series, following in the footsteps of Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham Carter in the role of the Queen’s sister.

At the time when the series was curtailed to five series, it was speculated that this meant it would not include contemporary problems faced by the royal family, including the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to step down from royal duties.

While The Crown was critically acclaimed in its first two series and won further awards for its third, some of the excitement around it seemed to have waned. It did not appear in a list Netflix published of its most-watched shows of 2019 in the UK.

But the award-winning show, one of the most popular on Netflix, has been described as part of the “global cultural zeitgeist” by Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix. The cast from season three won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble in a drama series, and Colman won the Golden Globe for best actress in a drama series. The Crown has so far won 144 award nominations.

Earlier this year, Sarandos praised the series, saying: “Thanks to creator and writer Peter Morgan and a phenomenal cast and crew, the show’s popularity grows with each new season and, as the recent SAG and Golden Globe Awards demonstrate, its quality remains unsurpassed.”