‘Crown’ season 5 delves into divorce drama
The 1990s were an especially rough decade for the British Royal Family, a time filled with scandals about (but not exclusive to) Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, whose faltering marriage finally broke down for good and in public. This is where the fifth season of “The Crown” picks up, back for another rendition of All My Windsors.
In the weeks leading up to the premiere, there was a good deal of foot-stamping in the media from Buckingham Palace and royal reporters concerned that Charles, just a few weeks into his reign as king, would be portrayed harshly. Anyone who was around when the events of the season unfurled will remember how messy things got.
But Charles and his palace courtiers needn’t have worried about the new chapter of the Netflix series. That’s because the show, from Peter Morgan, has always been royalist propaganda, viewing the Firm as a gilded cage — and the dysfunction within a direct result of that — rather than an innately corrupt endeavor.
The queen “never puts a foot wrong,” Prince Philip says at one point, and the show is all but tipping its hand, because this is a specific phrase you see a lot in royal reporting these days. Hyperbolic and absurd, it presumes a perfection no human can obtain, and yet here it is, presented with unblinking sincerity.
Another reason Charles’ worries about the season were unfounded? The show remains far more interested in his mother, which will perhaps come as either a relief or profound frustration for him. He may be king, but his mother remains the main event.
Imelda Staunton steps into the sensible shoes of Queen Elizabeth this time out (taking over from Olivia Colman, and Claire Foy before her) with a performance that suggests a woman who is steely, as opposed to stubborn and slow to take action.
By the time the ’90s rolled around, the marriages of her three eldest children — Charles, Anne
and Andrew — were falling apart, leading to some awkward optics, but “The Crown” either doesn’t know how or doesn’t care to get inside the head of the queen, who was such an inward figure. The show tends to be self-serious, but even when it aims for humor it doesn’t have the best judgment.
The casting of Dominic West as Charles is flattering more than anything — he is far too handsome and looks nothing like the real thing — but he gets enough of the mannerisms and vocal inflections right, along with that uncertain mix of entitlement and insecurity. Restless in middle age as his mother clings to the throne, he is forever maneuvering to be “incorporated earlier.”
Charles may be self-pitying — he calls himself a “useless ornament stuck in a waiting room gathering dust” to a roomful of his closest friends — but really, the whole family is self-pitying. Even Diana. Not that you blame her.
Played by Elizabeth Debicki, she is self-aware and soulful and has a far more legitimate claim to indignation than anyone else. And yet, we don’t get as much time with her as you’d expect, considering her outsized influence and the continued worldwide interest in her.
Morgan would rather take long detours that speculate oh-so-delicately about Prince Philip (Jonathan
Pryce) and his alleged affair with the much younger Penny Knatchbull (Natascha Mcelhone), who was his godson’s wife. Or devote an entire episode to Princess Margaret’s (Lesley Manville) ongoing pampered discontent.
Or another episode to Mohamed Al-fayed (the Egyptian-born Anglophile attempting to buy his way into royal circles) and his son Dodi (played by Salim Daw and Khalid Abdalla, respectively) — the latter of whom Diana dated after the divorce, and who would ultimately die with her in the 1997 car accident in Paris, events which will be covered next season.
Occasionally a sentiment is conveyed with some poetry. The growing chasm in the marriage between Elizabeth and Philip is captured in a scene that sees her happily playing with her corgis alone, as he stares down the hallway from afar, no interest in joining in. But too often the show is built to simply tick off the boxes — the queen’s “annus horribilis” speech; the embarrassing intercepted phone call made public between Charles and then-mistress Camilla Parker Bowles; the “revenge dress”; Andrew Morton’s book on Diana and, later, her “three of us in this marriage” Panorama interview; the eventual divorce.
None of it builds to a larger thesis about these people or the institution itself. The impressively lavish settings can’t make up for the emptiness of the script. Scenes — and emotional arcs — don’t get a chance to play out, but flit from one location and set of characters to another.
The 10-hour season feels overly long but also curious for what it leaves out. The show has never alluded to the other women with whom Charles was rumored to have affairs. Nor do we see evidence of his temper, which also has been well publicized over the years.
When the queen died, her personal fortune was estimated at half a billion dollars. As king, all of that has gone to Charles, untouched by inheritance tax. That’s because the royal family was able to negotiate this exemption in 1993 — during the very period that the fifth season takes place. And yet no mention of this either.
If the various players here weren’t members of the Windsor family, would their lives be deemed interesting enough for a TV series? I would argue no — they’re not compelling enough as characters. The ongoing fascination with “The Crown” is dependent on their position in the world.