It’s fascinating how little the people nearest to the throne want to be there, and how maddening the workload that accompanies the position.Ĭlaire Foy has the right bearing and the perfect Pound-note profile for the part, and as she settles into her absurd life, her character thrillingly becomes less tentative. It makes us view the Queen in an entirely different light. Here we see her, barely in her late twenties, struggle, for example, with weighty discussions she has by men who aren’t used to hearing no, and decide to hire a personal tutor in order to make sense of the changing modern world.
Our perception of Elizabeth II has inevitably been coloured by pity and, increasingly, apathy, as a character from our history books continues to stick around and get more irrelevant by the day. The Crown is an elaborately crafted, highly stirring drama showing us the innards of Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street, a human tale that shows us a young woman tightening her grip on the reigns of a country while the world around her shuffles around to make way. Yet, what price pomp? And this is prize pomp.
Should a service that has found its greatest successes in telling edgier stories keep looking to time gone by? Is spending this much on a show-a show revelling not merely in the past, but in a specifically stuffy version of the past-the practical thing to do? The Crown might be garnering fine reviews but, as reports emerge of an increasingly cash-strapped Netflix and the plateauing of its subscriber base, the numbers might not justify indulgent and highly expensive period creations such as this one and Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down, which I wrote about here many columns ago.
Yet has Netflix perhaps risked too much at a time when it doesn’t have enough to risk? The sets are magnificent, as is the period detailing and the wealth of recreated locations, and the cinematography is impressive enough for each episode to be shown in a theatre, if so desired.
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