Maggie and Di are the jewels in The Crown
REVIEW The Crown, season 4 Netflix ★★★★✩
ICONIC is a much-abused word. But when it comes to recent British history, it doesn’t apply much more than to Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher. Who else could steal the limelight from under the noses of the royal family in The Crown?
Where in the past The Crown has played its cards close to its chest, now it’s showing its revolutionary teeth. No wonder its portrayal of Prince Charles reportedly infuriated him, with aspersions being cast in the direction of Harry and Meghan and their Netfix deal. That plotline is worth a drama in itself.
But for now, the fourth season of Peter Morgan’s re-imagining of the Windsor dynasty is dominated by Emma Corrin’s blushing yet slyly manipulative Diana and Gillian Anderson’s startling Mrs Thatcher.
It’s a credit to newcomer Corrin and partner-in-despair Josh O’Connor – a needy, narcissistic and thoroughly unsympathetic Charles – that their relationship does more than simply rake over old ground. You feel the pain of two people in a nightmare of their own making.
The rest of the Windsors are emotionally constipated and frostily pragmatic, with Olivia Colman’s Queen fretting that, heaven forbid, her socially distant parenting may have resulted in damaged offspring.
And Morgan and Anderson achieve the seemingly impossible – almost making Thatcher relatable, as she’s subjected to humiliation by the Windsors. Anderson’s PM starts as a Spitting Image caricature but by the end it’s impossible, like The Crown itself, to separate fact from fiction.
But should we be bothered by that? The Crown, for all its detail, is fiction and indulges in fanciful flights – like Diana roller-skating the corridors of Buckingham Palace – that are pure Hollywood. Who knows or cares if that happened? This is right royal entertainment.