New faces abound, but TV’S best soap still reigns over us
‘Her face, her voice – they’re unmistakably Olivia Colman-ish. “Is this going to work?” you wonder’
First look review The Crown
Series three ★★★★★
Changing actors midway through a series can be a bad thing. Some of us are old enough to remember with alarm when Miss Ellie in Dallas went to bed as the homely Barbara Bel Geddes and woke up as glamourpuss Donna Reed. The Crown, then, is taking a risk by replacing its cast wholesale at the start of its third innings. But it is a relief to report that – having watched the new series in its entirety – the switch is successful.
Mind you, it does take a little adjustment on the viewer’s part. We accepted Claire Foy as the young Queen because she was relatively unknown before The Crown, and disappeared into the role. She has been superseded by the Oscarwinning Olivia Colman and even by the end of episode 10 it is impossible to shake the feeling that, well, you’re watching Olivia Colman. Her face, her voice – they’re unmistakably Olivia Colman-ish.
“Is this going to work?” you wonder to yourself as the series begins. But then comes a scene at the end of the first episode in which the Queen learns that the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, Sir Anthony Blunt, a man in whom she has placed her trust, has been unmasked as a KGB spy. Colman conveys her sense of betrayal – the shock, the disgust, the anger and the sadness – with one look. Ah, you think. Here it is. This is why she’s so good.
And what of her co-stars? Tobias Menzies is a commanding Duke of Edinburgh, albeit one speaking in the Prince of Wales’s accent. Helena Bonham Carter captures the complexities of Princess Margaret and is wonderfully rackety, dancing by the pool in Mustique with her toyboy lover or wearing shades at the Buckingham Palace breakfast table to deal with her endless hangovers.
Margaret was electrifying when played by Vanessa Kirby in the first two series; in middle-age she is more pathetic, denied a meaningful royal role and stuck in the most toxic of marriages.
All this takes place against key moments of history from 1964 to 1977 – from Churchill’s funeral to the Three-day Week, by way of the Harold Wilson years (there is a warm relationship between the Queen and Wilson, affectionately played by Jason Watkins).
Some are fascinating – an account of the bizarre series of events that saw Lord Mountbatten invited to topple Wilson in a military coup – and others sacrificed in service of the characters (a duff episode in which the Duke of Edinburgh has a midlife crisis because he wasn’t the first man to walk on the Moon).
This is the season in which the young royals get a first outing. As the deadpan Princess Anne, Erin Doherty has no big storyline of her own but steals every scene she’s in, whether delivering a withering put-down or belting out David Bowie’s Starman in the car.
But the real focus, when the series reaches its midpoint, is the Prince of Wales. Bonham Carter has described the show as “positive PR” for the Royal family, and in Charles’s case that could not be more true. Josh O’connor wins our sympathy as the unhappy prince, staring glumly at the floor and forever making impassioned speeches about wanting a voice.
Painfully lacking in self-confidence yet with an inflated sense of his own talents, he sees himself as an outlier in the mould of the Duke of Windsor:
“He was brighter, wittier, with individuality of thought… he was true to himself and they united against him. I just replaced him.” Charles loves Camilla, but the meddling Queen Mother (Marion Bailey) and Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance) cook up a dastardly plot to separate them.
We are directed to feel less favourably towards the Queen, whose lack of maternal feeling for Charles is striking. She remains stoic and dutiful – being Her Majesty is a lonely business, as illustrated by the many shots of her alone in vast rooms – but she is an awfully cold fish.
The standout episode – almost unbearable to watch – concerns the tragedy of Aberfan. Writer Peter Morgan has taken one nugget of information – that the Queen’s biggest regret, according to a courtier, was her delay in visiting the scene – and spun it into a heart-to-heart between the Queen and Wilson in which she claims that those who saw her weeping at Aberfan were mistaken: “I dabbed a bone dry eye and by some miracle no one noticed… I have known for some time there is something wrong with me. Deficient.”
It feels wrong to take a national tragedy that claimed the lives of 144 people – 116 children – and make it all about the Queen. A little like, oh, I don’t know, young royals using a trip to Africa to complain about their lot in life. But that is the only tonal misstep in the series. The Crown remains, by far, the best soap opera on television.
The Crown is released on Netflix on Nov 17.