After a two year wait and a brand new cast, is The Crown still worth a watch?
The highly anticipated fifth season of the acclaimed Netflix show, The Crown, dropped on November 9, covering events in the 1990s like Princess Diana’s interview with Panorama, Charles and Diana’s separation and divorce and the Queen and Prince Philip’s visit to Russia in 1994. However, the show’s reception seemed more muted than previous seasons and inspired more criticism. What exactly did The Crown’s fifth season get right, and what did it get wrong?
Needless to say, spoilers abound below.
The new cast
In keeping with the show’s third season, the Crown once again re-casted in order to more accurately depict its aging characters. Imelda Staunton does an admirable job playing Queen Elizabeth II, while Jonathan Pryce plays a Prince Philip who is somewhat more subdued and mellowed than the previous seasons’ depictions. Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki also get a large amount of screentime as Charles and Diana, while Lesley Manville and Claudia Harrison as Princess Margaret and Princess Anne round out the main cast. The actors do the best with what they’re given-particularly Lesley Manville, who really is only the focus for one episode but makes the most of it. Elizabeth Debicki is a standout as Diana and Dominic West shows a softer side of Prince Charles. Imelda Staunton has a tough act to follow after Claire Foy in seasons one and two and Olivia Colman in seasons three and four and does a solid job overall, although some of her scenes stand out more than others. Season five has the same problem as season four. With Charles’s expanded role and the introduction of characters like Diana and Margaret Thatcher (season 4), attention is necessarily diverted from characters like Elizabeth, Philip and Margaret that have been on the show since season one. This cast also looks noticeably different from their real life counterparts and at first it is difficult to tell who is playing who.
the pacing
One of the season’s real weaknesses lies in its pacing. Again, this was a problem in season four. The show tried to follow too many people and cover too many events in too few episodes. Season five has the same rushed quality (although thankfully without Margaret Thatcher) the ‘War of the Wales’ is mentioned mostly in passing while entire episodes are given to things like Mohammed Al-Fayed’s rise to prominence and the British Royal Family’s involvement with the Romanov family after the Russian Revolution. While these episodes are some of the best of the season, it necessarily means that it makes the rest of the season even more rushed. As the show seeks to cover a decade it has to decide what events to include and what to cut, but the compressed timeline distracts from the coherency of the season. People who don’t have some familiarity with the royal family’s actions in the 1990s already might be confused or find the narrative difficult to follow.
This season of the Crown also seems to be trying to please as many different types of people without really pleasing any of them. Although royal commentators seemed concerned that this season of The Crown would further damage his popularity, Charles comes off looking like a qualified king in waiting who’s in touch with his people at the end of the season. All of his altercations with Diana during the last season are conveniently forgotten. Fans complained about the way Diana was depicted within the show as well. While there’s some truth to these allegations, the contrast between Charles and Diana this season is rather jarring. The showrunners once again choose not to engage with the rumors that Prince Philip had an affair, choosing to depict his relationship with the much younger Penny Romsey as a deep intellectual connection but not something sexual. Still, the show isn’t afraid to show cracks in Philip and Elizabeth’s marriage. Although the showrunners play it safe, especially with Elizabeth, Philip and Charles, they aren’t afraid to highlight where the monarchy is out of step with reality-including a jarring conversation between Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister John Major (a solid though quiet new character) where she demands to use public funds to build a new royal yacht during a national recession. Neither fans of the royal family nor antimonarchists will likely be totally satisfied.
What the Show Does Well
Perhaps the most impactful scene of the show is a flashback to the 1918 assassination of the Russian royal family because the British royal family, by not allowing them asylum in England, inadvertently signed their death warrant. The assassination scene itself is brutal and gorey, flashing between the Windsors hunting pheasant while the Romanov daughters are being bayoneted to death. It’s an extremely difficult scene to watch and should have had a separate warning before the episode because of its brutality. The brutality is necessary, however, because that’s how it happened in real life. For once, the violence serves a purpose. And the Windsors really did decide not to take the Romanovs in, fearing their unpopularity would damage their own public standing-although by all accounts George V and Queen Mary always deeply regretted what happened. They intervened for other royals in danger from revolution, including the Greek royal family, evacuating various members in 1922-including a very young Prince Philip.
Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret stole every scene she was in, particularly in episode 4 when she meets her old love Group Captain Peter Townsend one last time. The relationship between Prince Philip and Penny Romsey is also unexpectedly touching, especially as he helps her get over the death of her young daughter by introducing her to carriage riding. Prince William is also a surprisingly impactful character, as he’s shown having to deal with the consequences of his parents’ very public divorce and separation. The episode depicting the writing of Andrew Morton’s smash hit biography on Diana, completed with the Princess’s help, is also especially fun to watch and provides a note of levity in what is overall a tonally downcast season.
FINAL VERDICT
Although The Crown’s season five is enjoyable enough, it’s lost the heart of its predecessors. While the relationship between Charles and Diana was enough to tie together a crowded fourth season, events in season five feel disjointed and sometimes rather lifeless, lacking a central theme beyond the eternal struggle between Charles’s desire to modernize and Elizabeth’s desire to follow tradition. The actors do their best and deliver some standout performances, but no one really seems to have enough screen time to get satisfactory conclusions to their arcs.
This season really shakes Elizabeth more than anyone before it. Windsor Castle burns, three of her children’s marriages collapse at nearly the same time and the monarchy itself is undermined by leaks to the media from insiders and outsiders alike. It will be interesting to see how the next and final season of the show depicts her dealing with Diana’s death and taking steps to repair her relationship with the country in the wake of it. Hopefully it will take the time to really explore these pivotal events, instead of another season of disjointed glimpses of the family over another decade.