The Crown should be forced to carry a truth warning

HOW would the makers of the Netflix series The Crown like it if a drama were made and broadcast about their personal lives, in which wholly fictional and discreditable incidents were introduced into their biographies? Not much. But of course they need not fear this, as few people know or care who they are and they are not particularly important.

The Crown is often, if not always, superb entertainment. And that is the trouble. Such authenticity can easily persuade viewers that they are watching documentary rather than drama. Informed voices who point out that several of its claims are simply false will never be able to overcome the sheer power of gripping TV. Many who watch it will come to think that the scenes they see are history rather than fiction. Much of it deals with events well before our own time.

Now its fifth series will portray the most troubled and controversial years of the late Queen’s reign, in which the new King was profoundly and very personally involved. You might think that the closeness of these events and the fact that many deeply affected by them (including Princes William and Harry) are very much alive might lead to some restraint, if only out of good manners. But from what we can learn, this will not be so.

This is an abuse of the great freedoms that exist in our society. Imagine the fate, in China, of those who dramatised the truth about Chairman Mao with similar abandon, let alone of any who made worse things up about him.

Some profitable commercial products that might endanger their users must rightly carry a health warning. It is time this rule applied to those who seek to profit by making unreal things up about real people. It might say: ‘Warning – this programme may endanger the truth.’