How can Harry take the Netflix dollar when they so cruelly exploit his own family?
IMUST confess I am not a huge fan of The Crown. I watched the first few series more out of professional duty than anything else, and found it irritatingly one dimensional, reductive and exhaustingly cliched, little more than a high-budget soap. Unlike other shows about the Royal Family, which either seek to satirise or stylise their existence, The Crown is mawkish and exploitative.
Its makers have never viewed the real-life counterparts of their on-screen characters with any sort of humanity, seeing their lives, loves and personal tragedies as nothing more than a gold mine to be exploited for maximum profit.
‘Fair enough,’ you might say. ‘That’s showbiz.’ But what’s really sad is that in this respect they have arguably much in common with two of the Royal Family’s own most high-profile members, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who financed their move to America by joining Netflix’s payroll to the tune of several million dollars.
People have often expressed a certain amount of consternation that the Queen’s grandson should willingly take the shilling of an outfit which has, over the years, been at best economical with his family’s truth, at worst downright exploitative.
But to my mind it makes perfect sense. After all, their objectives seem to me to be perfectly aligned: make as much money out of The Firm as possible.
THE Crown does this by spinning half-truths and gossip into high-ratings drama which people, particularly Americans, swallow without question; meanwhile, the Duke and Duchess trade off their associations with the folks back home – all the while trashing the institution that feeds them by casting themselves as victims of some amorphous conspiracy.
Why on earth wouldn’t they get into bed with Netflix? It’s the perfect partnership.
The latest kick in the teeth for the Royals – which let’s not forget have just suffered a colossal bereavement – comes in episode one of the fifth series, which covers the years from 1991 to 1996, encompassing the breakdown of Charles’s marriage to Diana.
It opens with the late Queen being depicted, aged 65, as a hopeless hasbeen, stuck in the past and desperate to cling on to power beyond her sell-by date despite the wishes of her people who, according to a poll, wish she would abdicate.
It’s not even a month since she was finally laid to rest at Windsor; but that doesn’t bother Netflix. Business is business, ratings are ratings. If anything they probably calculate that her death makes it more likely people will tune in.
No matter that her son, King Charles, is still grieving. Now he faces being portrayed as a pushy usurper, desperate to get his mother out of the way so he can get his mitts on her crown.
Not only is it monstrously disrespectful, it’s downright cruel. But that doesn’t matter, because let’s not forget: the Royals aren’t real people anyway, they’re just cashcows for Netflix executives. In some ways, though, you can’t blame them. They’re just doing their jobs. Prince Harry, on the other hand, now that’s a whole other matter.
These are his so-called loved ones, his family, his father and grandmother, who are being exploited. You might have thought he would at the very least want nothing to do with the perpetrators, very possibly speak out against them. After all, he’s not exactly backwards in coming forwards when it comes to voicing his grievances with other sectors of the media.
But no. Not a peep. Funny that. Leave it to Prince Harry’s brother to tell the truth and shame the Devil. The Prince of Wales accused Netflix of ‘profiteering’ from his family, and in particular his mother’s infamous Panorama interview, obtained by Martin Bashir under false pretences, which will also be depicted in the coming series.
Harry has never made any secret of his hatred for those he believes hounded his mother to her death. How sad that he should now find himself on the payroll of those turning her – and the rest of the Royals’ – pain into entertainment.