Story of young Queen that makes Downton look like a school play
This is how television looks on a hollywood budget. The Crown (Netflix), the much hyped ten-part megadrama charting the early years of the Queen’s reign, is a sumptuous display of smallscreen splendour.
A staggering £200,000 was spent on one scene that lasts about 30 seconds as loyal crowds throng the fields beside the railway track as the Royal train, like a private Orient Express, whisks the Windsors to sandringham. Westminster Abbey rings with song for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to her dashing naval Duke, as costume drama becomes fairytale.
The Crown makes Downton Abbey look like a school play. it is beyond spectacular, more than magnificent.
Which is not to say it’s perfect. There are plenty of moments that will make you scoff, and say: ‘For heaven’s sake! Did that really happen?’
Most glaring is the scene where a banquet room at Buckingham Palace is transformed into an operating theatre for an emergency operation on the dying George Vi. Under blazing chandeliers, with their surgical instruments laid out on a mahogany table, the doctors remove one of the king’s blackened lungs – and wrap it in newspaper, like a ready-smoked fish.
Prince Philip (Matt smith) hovers, hands behind his back, seemingly restraining himself from asking the anaesthetist: ‘And what do you do? have you come far?’ smith (best known as the 11th incarnation of Dr
‘There isn’t a single slack scene’
Who) doesn’t bother imitating the Duke’s strangled vocal style, but he captures the mannerisms and the walk exactly.
Claire Foy, as his young bride, does the opposite: she has the voice to a nicety (or as she would say, ‘naceety’), though she cannot reproduce Elizabeth’s impassive expressions. Instead, she often looks petulant.
All this can be excused by the need for drama. The Crown delivers – there isn’t a single slack scene, from the ravishing credits onwards, as molten gold and liquid diamond roll around each other in kaleidoscopic prettiness to form a coronet.
Dramatist Peter Morgan’s dialogue stings and sizzles. In a marvellous moment on the morning of the Royal Wedding, the irritable George VI (Jared Harris) is soothed by his equerry, who diverts his temper by making him laugh. They trade limericks, the monarch reciting a filthy one that includes a four-letter word which sounds a little like ‘king’, but isn’t.
Ridiculous? Certainly. Offensive? Not really, because Harris infuses the character with such boyish glee. For
‘It is flawed, but breathtaking’
a moment, George even forgets to stammer.
Observers who were expecting this series to centre entirely on Elizabeth will be surprised. At first, she is barely more than a peripheral figure and, though she commands the centre of the stage over ten episodes, this is as much an evocation of the era as a personal portrait.
John Lithgow as Sir Winston Churchill steals the first episode, showboating so shamelessly at the Royal Wedding that a choirboy turns round to shush him. Subsequent instalments of this £100m production – all available to binge-watch via Netflix’s streaming video service – explore the teenage Princess Margaret’s infatuation with the married Group Captain Peter Townsend, as well as Cold War tensions and domestic crises such as the Great Smog of 1952.
Yes, it is flawed. But The Crown is so breathtaking that you’ll want to wolf it all down in a weekend, and then return to savour every moment.