It’s just a nakedly republican polemic, intent on inflicting every possible embarrassment on the Royal Family
THERE are no depths of bad taste that writer Peter Morgan does not plumb in the new ten-part series of The Crown on Netflix. Divorces, infidelities, the most intimate conversations, the infamous interview with Princess Diana and Martin Bashir, even the death of a five-year-old from cancer – all are exploited for lurid drama.
As the eight-and-a-half hours of new film were made available to journalists, the sheer virulence of the storylines became shockingly clear.
Charles, Philip and at times the Queen herself are portrayed with disdain bordering on mockery.
A teenage Prince William is also shown in an unflattering light, as slightly dim and sulky, though his younger brother Harry is let off lightly and barely features.
Netflix may well find that, with the international grief and mourning that marked the death of the Queen less than two months ago, viewers’ appetite for royal muck-raking has disappeared.
Insiders at the streaming giant say the mood in the company is already uneasy, with some American executives surprised by the backlash from fans who fear the death of the Princess
of Wales will be re-enacted in graphic detail. This series stops short of that moment. It ends with Diana, divorced from Charles, preparing for a Mediterranean holiday with her friend Dodi Fayed.
Full reviews are embargoed until Saturday morning, but no spoiler alert is needed when I say that this series of The Crown is unrecognisable in its tone, compared to the original series in 2016.
This show with its almost unlimited budget and all-star cast has become a monstrous perversion of itself.
At the beginning, The Crown charted the affectionate romance of the Princess Elizabeth and her prince, the Duke of Edinburgh, played with touching vulnerability by Claire Foy and Matt Smith.
But it has descended into scandalmongering, intent on inflicting every possible embarrassment on the Royal Family.
The Crown is now a nakedly republican polemic, using embarrassment as its chief weapon against the monarchy. Chief victim is the monarch himself.
Perhaps Morgan and his Netflix paymasters imagined, like most of us, that the Queen would survive, ruling above reproach, for a number of years to come – and that the former Prince of Wales was fair game.
Certainly, none of the preview episodes (labelled, it ought to be said, as ‘work in progress’) carried an acknowledgment of Her Majesty’s death.
Any viewers expecting a respectful caption, saluting her 70 years on the throne, will be disappointed.
But from the outset, the campaign against Charles is lacerating. In scene after scene, he is depicted as devious, impatient, resentful, devoid of selfawareness in his desperation to be king.
This prince is a plotter whose mind works constantly, even during holidays with friends, on ways to dislodge his mother and force her aside. His aides talk of little else.
Despite the fact that former Prime Minister John Major has categorically dismissed this picture as nonsense, Charles is seen making a pathetic fool of himself as he tries to recruit the Tory PM into his treacherous schemes.
Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles – now the King and Queen Consort, a fact shamefully ignored by Netflix – suffer greater indignity still, with the replay of that excruciating phonecall.
Dominic West as Charles and Olivia Williams as Camilla, then his married mistress, re-enact every word of it... including that awful extended metaphor about being reincarnated as a tampon.
It is performed without mercy, and to emphasise the humiliation we see the reaction of other royals when the transcript is published. Princess Margaret reads it in bed. Diana holds her head in her hands.
But even this is overshadowed by Netflix’s relish for the way the Princess of Wales was tricked into a damaging TV interview by Martin Bashir of the BBC.
The affair is spread across two episodes, as Bashir is shown meeting Diana in a dimly lit car park and feeding lies to her, urging her to trust no one, at a time when her mental health was at its most fragile.
When the interview airs, long sections of it are restaged, despite Prince William’s insistence that it should never be aired because it harmed his mother so much.
We hear Elizabeth Debicki, as Diana, discussing her post-natal depression after William was born, her conviction that allegations that she was ‘crazy’ were used to discredit her, her fears for her children and her belief that Charles would never be king.
Some of these lines are spoken as we watch other members of the Royal Family – either glued to their TV sets or pointedly ignoring the broadcast.
Charles reacts with rage, shouting: ‘What the hell is she doing?’ Prince William (played by Senan
West, Dominic’s son) is seen at Eton: a teacher asks if he is all right, and the boy, then 13, says, ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ before getting up and walking away.
But the camera is trained on Diana’s face as she murmurs the most famous line from the interview: ‘Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.’
Equally callous is the decision by Morgan to include the death of Leonora Knatchbull, granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten, who was just five when she died from kidney cancer in 1991.
We see her in the first ten minutes of episode one, as Charles and the girl’s father, his friend Norton, admire the child’s curly hair and discuss her treatment.
In the second episode, Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) visits Leonora’s grave with her mother, Penny. Both Norton and Penny are still alive, and friends say they are distressed at the thought of their child’s death being presented on screen.
Their feelings, and those of all the Royal Family, are ignored.
Netflix and Peter Morgan treat them with cold-blooded contempt. Rarely has a drama been more cruel.
The apparent malice extends to its portrait of the teenage William, who is shown as lacking
The campaign against Charles is lacerating
Rarely has a drama been more cruel
confidence and even intelligence. On arrival at Eton for his first day, he signs his name while a watching teacher sneers at his handwriting.
He is then heard asking his father what he should record as his religion. Charles rolls his eyes and tells the boy he is Church of England – and will one day be its head.
William is also portrayed as embarrassed and conflicted as hostilities between his mother and the rest of the Royal Family become open.
During a visit to see the Queen, he dashes from the room when talk turns to Diana.
And he becomes sullen when his parents try to draw him into their conflict.
Prince Harry, by contrast, is rarely seen – and then only as the apple of Diana’s eye, cuddling up to her and persuading her to let him play video games.
How Harry, who professes hatred of any media exploitation of his mother’s memory or intrusion into his own life, can continue to be associated with Netflix defies belief.
His own media company, Archewell Productions, has signed a deal with Netflix worth a rumoured $100million (£87million). That will have to be a matter between Harry and his conscience.