The Crown season 6 review – so bad it’s basically
an out-of-body experience
This Diana-obsessed series is the very definition of
bad writing. Despite the brilliant cast, it’s a crass, soapy dive into the
abyss – not least in the atrocious scenes featuring Ghost Diana
Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Thu 16 Nov
2023 08.01 GMT
Welcome to
series six of The Crown – or The Diana Show, as it has now become. Where once
you could expect a 10-episode run to represent at least a decade of royal
shenanigans, limning the political machinations of the time and throwing in an
examination of evolving palace protocol minutiae, the first three episodes of
the latest instalment deal with just the last eight weeks of Diana’s life, and
the fourth with The Crash and the funeral.
Unless you
are reading this while ensconced in a Diana shrine of your own making, those
few months are recreated in a truly punishing level of detail. From the
beginning The Crown has walked a tightrope between prestige drama – capable of
evoking a world of emotional struggle from a single scene or queenly line – and
soapy nonsense. It started teetering in season three, lost its balance entirely
over the next two and is now plummeting into the abyss, despite the uniformly
brilliant performances from the entire cast – Elizabeth Debicki as the queen of
our hearts especially, of course – trying gamely to arrest its fall. The kind
of spin Imelda Staunton as the Queen can put on a line as simple as “Oh, that
girl … ” is a gift, but The Crown is no longer worthy of it, or her.
In the
manner of a Hallmark movie, Diana is marked for death at every turn – you know,
just in case you are unaware of the fate of the most famous woman in the world
and have forgotten the frenzy of grief that gripped the country thereafter. She
is, in The Crown’s telling of it, a virtual saint: see her talk about
landmines! See her play normal middle-class games with her beloved boys! See
her fall in love with sweet Dodi Fayed! See her furrowed brow as she takes the
sensible advice of her therapist on board and pledges to start a new life as
soon as she gets home from Paris and away from these villainous paparazzi who
are following her into this tunnel! And thus the postmortem convulsions of an
entire country are presented as no more than her due. By the time she has
called William and Harry, the point has been so laboured that this is the last
communication they will have with their mother that there might as well be a
news ticker along the bottom of the screen screaming in capitals “TUNNEL
COMING! SHE GONNA DIE SO BAD!”
And yet the
worst is still to come: after her death, Ghost Diana appears to Prince Charles
and then to the Queen as a kind of ministering angel, illuminating for them the
way and the light and the best way of tending to the mood of the people, to
whose every individual heart she has always had a direct hotline. She thanks
Charles “for being so raw, broken and handsome” in the hospital when he saw her
body. “I’ll take that with me,” she adds. My notes at this point are
indecipherable, which is just as well, as I suspect what they say would be
unprintable. By the time Ghost Diana takes the Queen’s hand and gently whispers
“You’ve always shown us what it meant to be British. Maybe it’s time to learn,
too”, and prompts her to cave in to the headline’s demand to “Show us you care,
Ma’am”, I am having quite the out-of-body experience myself.
But Ghost
Diana is all of a piece with what is now simply a crass, by-numbers piece of
film-making, with a script that barely aspires to craft, let alone art, any
more. “She doesn’t get to keep the man of her dreams,” says Diana to her
ex-husband as they achieve detente. “But the friend of her dreams.” “Look what
you’ve managed to achieve in the year since your divorce!” says Dodi at the
beginning of The Last Night. “A global anti-landmine campaign! Raising millions
for charity! And yet you’re still not happy.” “It’s the story of my life,”
sighs pre-Ghost Diana. “Dashing around, losing sight of myself in the process.”
It is the very definition of typing-not-writing.
The emotion
it does manage to elicit comes simply from the power of small moments – which
at least have the sense to fade to silence – such as seeing the boys being told
by Charles of their mother’s death, or Harry writing the “Mummy” card that will
sit atop the coffin. But even this is little more than voyeurism.
Beyond all
its formal failures, late-period Crown is also impossibly hamstrung by being
set well within living memory. Even if there were anything to engage with, the
memories and consequent questions that crowd into the viewer’s mind at every
stage would make it impossible. Was Charles really so astute about what her
death would mean, so quickly? It seems unlikely, from everything we knew then,
and the mountains we have learned since. And we know Prince Philip didn’t
murmur to Harry an explanation of the crowd’s behaviour during the funeral
procession (“They’re not crying for her. They’re crying for you”) because we
were, effectively, there. We would have seen it. The suspension of disbelief
can never be established. Ghost Diana dances among ruins.
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‘Royally lost the plot’: how The Crown went from
prestige drama to TV disaster
It was once a stately piece of landmark TV, but seven
years on it’s a trashy, unwittingly comical melodrama that borders on the
exploitative. How did things get so bad?
Michael
Hogan
Fri 17 Nov
2023 06.00 GMT
Prime
ministers have called it “malicious nonsense” and “complete rubbish”.
Theatrical dames have criticised it as “crude sensationalism”. And now the
notices for the new season are in, they don’t make pretty reading, either. The
Guardian’s Lucy Mangan found it so excruciating to watch whilst delivering her
one-star verdict that she felt like she was having an “out-of-body experience”.
Other critics have called it “clumsy and crass”, “ill-judged and outrageous”,
“pointless and sad”, “a disappointing new low”, “a very pretty bore”. Let’s
call them “mixed reviews”, shall we?
Somehow The
Crown – that everyday story of blue-blooded folk – has become the most divisive
drama on TV. Forget Euphoria’s druggy orgies or The Idol’s horrendous misogyny.
The real shocker on our screens is a family of billionaire toffs gazing
mournfully out of palace windows and clapping politely at polo matches.
The Crown’s
controversy-bait status has been a gathering storm. When Peter Morgan’s regal
saga first swept on to Netflix in 2016, it was lavishly produced and largely
non-problematic. Most viewers had no memory of the postwar events it dramatised
(the debut run covered 1947 to 1955 – like, totally olden times) nor strong
views about them. The people it portrayed (Winston Churchill, Wallis Simpson)
were long dead. Any arguments were limited to whether actors looked enough like
their real-life counterparts. It was part posh soap opera, part history lesson.
Emmys and Golden Globes were duly plundered like colonial treasures.
Over its
six seasons, The Crown has steadily caught up with modern times and this has
become a mounting problem. Suddenly most of its characters are alive, vocal and
consulting their lawyers. Viewers now have vivid memories and their own takes.
The closer The Crown creeps to the present, the more historical distance is
lost and the more contentious it becomes.
The fourth season was described by the Guardian’s
Simon Jenkins as ‘a cowardly abuse of artistic licence’
There were
early grumblings about speculative storylines, such as young Princess
Margaret’s wish to be queen or Prince Philip’s refusal to kneel at his wife’s
coronation. The real Philip considered suing Netflix over the “upsetting”
season two subplot where he was blamed for the 1937 death of his sister,
Princess Cecilie. The backlash had ramped up by the fourth season, described by
the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins as “fake history … reality hijacked as propaganda
and a cowardly abuse of artistic licence”. The royals themselves stayed
characteristically tight-lipped but Charles’s biographer Jonathan Dimbleby
called it “nonsense on stilts”.
There is an
argument to say The Crown is merely a scapegoat, taking the rap for a wider
shift in attitudes. Due to intrusive press coverage, oversharing interviews and
soul-baring memoirs, we know more about the royals than ever. Is it Netflix
displaying a lack of reverence or our entire contemporary culture? Does today’s
scandal-prone monarchy merit reverence anyway?Morgan was called “callous” for
using the death of five-year-old Leonora Knatchbull to precipitate an
insinuated romance between her mother Penny and the Duke of Edinburgh. It was
widely mocked as jarringly EastEnders-esque when Charles raged at his mother:
“If we were an ordinary family and social services came to visit, they would
have thrown us into care and you into jail.” Increasingly, The Crown’s imagined
dialogue sounds like generic scriptwriting, rather than how these people might
actually speak.
Nowadays
coverage of the series is more about factchecking it than considering its
merits as screen entertainment. Many critics seem confused by the difference
between drama and documentary. How dare Morgan lightly spice up events to make
them more compelling? Why invent dialogue for the royals and not base the whole
thing around dignified silence? Let’s all march on Netflix, waving pitchforks
and cuddly Paddington bears.
Unfortunately,
the growing controversy coincided with the show’s quality falling off its
throne. Biseasonal cast changes haven’t helped. The line of succession from
Claire Foy to Olivia Colman to Imelda Staunton has delivered diminishing
returns. Jonathan Pryce’s harrumphing incarnation of Prince Philip is a shadow
of the nuanced figure portrayed by Matt Smith and Tobias Menzies.
Hard-partying
Princess Margaret – an MVP in early seasons, when Vanessa Kirby was terrific
and Helen Bonham Carter quietly heartbreaking – has been reduced to fleeting,
fag-puffing cameos from a wasted Lesley Manville. Emma Corrin’s empathic
embodiment of teen Lady Di propelled her to stardom and Elizabeth Debicki now
shines but many remain unconvinced by Dominic West as Charles.
The final
season drops in two parts – the first four episodes arrived this week, the last
six follow on 14 December – and is dominated by Diana, Princess of Wales’s
untimely death. Netflix has been at pains to point out that the 1997 Paris
tragedy is depicted “delicately”, assuring pearl-clutching pundits that “the
exact moment of crash impact won’t be shown”. Morgan told Variety: “Oh God, we
were never going to show the crash. Never.”
Regardless,
it is still being berated for poor taste and liberty-taking. The phrase “too
soon” has been bandied about. So has the phrase “disaster porn” – before the
episodes were seen, naturally. As Morgan said: “All the criticism comes in
anticipation of the show coming out. The minute it’s out and people watch it,
they instantly fall silent. And probably feel rather stupid.” He has a point
but it’s wishful thinking on the “fall silent” part.
It was
deeply risky depicting the Pont de l’Alma tunnel crash, which mercifully isn’t
seen, only heard. Bafflingly, it’s framed by whimsical scenes of a whistling
Parisian taking his dog for a moonlit walk. He’s pleading with the pooch to do
its business when a Mercedes hurtles past, tyres squeal and a sickening crunch
is audible. It’s a strange creative choice, to say the least.
In seven years, The Crown has gone from a superior
Downton Abbey to a gossipy guilty pleasure
Appearances
of Diana’s ghost provide a further flashpoint, guaranteed to send Middle
England swivel-eyed with outrage. Morgan has denied that her posthumous cameos,
talking gnomically to Charles and the Queen from beyond the grave like a
willowy Yoda, are strictly spectral. “I never imagined it as Diana’s ghost in
the traditional sense,” he said. “It was her continuing to live vividly in the
minds of those she left behind.” When she appears from beyond the grave, she
genuinely announces herself with a camp “Ta-da!”
Still the
clangers keep coming. Foreshadowing of Diana’s death is ham-fisted. Dodi
Fayed’s ghost pops up, presumably as a gesture towards equal opportunities in
the afterlife. While young Harry is gut-wrenchingly weepy about “Mummy’s”
death, Prince William turns into Kevin the teenager – angstily stomping around
Balmoral listening to Radiohead. The suite of episodes closes with a moment so
silly it’s more likely to make viewers laugh than cry.
In the
run-up to this week’s global release, Team Crown embarked on a preemptive
“positive publicity drive” in a bid to calm the inevitable blowback. Morgan
seemed tetchy and defensive in interviews. No wonder. It all feels an awfully
long way from the show’s early highs: Foy’s gong-garlanded performance, the
Kenyan tour, Aberfan, the Great Fog, the Marburg Files, those sumptuous
$15m-per-episode production values.
What began
as a prestige period piece now resembles a trashy telemovie. The untold
historical stories and clever parallel plots of earlier series have fallen by
the wayside. Slow-burn subtlety has been swapped for splashy melodrama. In
seven years, The Crown has gone from a superior Downton Abbey to a gossipy
guilty pleasure.
Yet despite
all the fact v fiction hand-wringing, it still tops Netflix’s most-viewed
charts. In its home stretch, however, this lightning-rod drama has royally lost
the plot. We’ll still watch it but we won’t admire it: a sentence that might
equally apply to our feelings about the House of Windsor itself.
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