Will Harry now call out Netflix for this gross intrusion into his mother’s privacy?
(...DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH!)
How are we going to amuse ourselves in the ceremonial void between the Queen’s Funeral and the King’s Coronation? Luckily, here comes Netflix to the rescue, with plans to plug that infotainment gap with a grisly ritual of its own making — The Crown.
The new series, which will be released next month, focuses on the turbulent years between 1990 and 1997, and no one would argue that it was a low point for the Royal Family. Yet do the windsors really deserve to be portrayed, as they have to date, as a parade of stuffed toff freaks with no redeeming features whatsoever?
In series three, the Queen was even shown visiting Aberfan in 1966 — after the colliery spoil tip disaster that killed 116 children and 28 adults — and being so unmoved by the tragedy that she had to fake her tears before facing the bereaved public.
Art is one thing, duplicitous emotional embroidery for the sake of dramatic plot lines is another.
I thought it was shameful at the time, and still do now.
ThIs week we learn that the fifth series will continue in the same vein: the Queen is still a cold fish; Charles is an unfeeling brute; mad, marginalised Diana is a diamondwearing schemer; and their children are collateral damage as the war of the waleses plunges onwards, finally
ending in divorce and separate quests for personal happiness.
In addition, Diana — this time played by Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki — is seen as an enthusiastic paramour, trysting with both hasnat Khan and Dodi Fayed.
There are scenes depicting her with her lovers. Is this entirely fair? God knows how william and harry can stand it. Their mother cavorting with her boyfriends — all of it in glowing technicolour, to be watched and pored over by millions.
Prince harry has spoken at length of how walking behind the coffin at his mother’s funeral was mentally scarring and emotionally damaging. we all rightly sympathised with him, and the terrible trials he’s endured as a privileged royal ever since.
so surely he will rail against this fresh offensive on the memory of his mother — a woman who is no longer around to defend herself against the imprecations of filmmakers disguising themselves as truth-seekers?
surely he will be berating Netflix at the first opportunity for this gross intrusion of his family’s privacy, this invasion and depiction of his mother’s own mental state in her most intimate moments?
or is that another deafening silence I hear from Montecito? The silence of a prince who has his own lucrative Netflix deals to protect. Not to mention his plans to harvest recent royal history for his own gain. God knows why I am so bothered about it all, if he is not. Yet I am. For surely these events are too fresh to be historic, too raw to be served up as entertainment for the masses?
The excavation and sexploitation of the recent past of a family who did not ask for this attention and who can do nothing about it seems very unfair.
having a version of their most personal moments fictionalised, then lavishly distributed to an audience who have demonstrated in the past that they do not know the difference between make-believe and reality seems a very piercing, and very modern, form of cruelty.
would Netflix dare to do this to any other prominent family? The Murdochs? The Beckhams? The Rainiers? The Trump-Kushners? The house of Bourbon? I wonder.
In the meantime, there is nothing much the senior royals can do, except sit with a trembling finger on the remote control while Prince harry and Netflix do their worst.