Peter Morgan, The Crown’s creator, said recently that he was fed up discussing the crowning glory of his career as a dramatist. “I just don’t like talking about it,” he told Variety. “I don’t think it’s possible to have a sensible conversation about The Crown in the United Kingdom.”
Previous seasons of his hit show were certainly controversial. Just ask the former UK prime minister John Major, who accused the royal-family drama of “peddling a barrel-load of nonsense”. But such grumblings will pale compared with the firestorm set to engulf Netflix as an enjoyable if potentially exploitative, borderline-tawdry first half of the sixth and final series lands on the streaming platform on Thursday.
It’s part three of Netflix’s Diana trilogy, following Emma Corrin’s portrayal of the doe-eyed young Lady Di in The Crown’s fourth season and Elizabeth Debicki as a more worldly, jaundiced princess of Wales last time out. Debicki is back for this final run, which begins with the chilling sight of a speeding Mercedes entering a tunnel in Paris, followed by a swarm of paparazzi on mopeds. It’s August 31st, 1997, and The Crown has just re-created, for our bingeing pleasure, the death of Diana.
If you thought Morgan was ready to move smartly on from this great schism in Britain’s emotional life, think again. The next three episodes flash back to Diana’s relationship with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), the browbeaten playboy son of the domineering Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw).
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Morgan paints Diana as nothing other than saintly while giving us Dodi as a well-meaning naif. The villain is Dodi’s father, who manipulates his boy into dating Diana and hires a photographer to capture them mid-snog, so publicising their relationship to the world (including Dodi’s miffed fiancee).
It’s thoroughly middlebrow fare. But there are a few queasy notes. There’s lots of the young William and Harry (Rufus Kampa and Fflyn Edwards). Their grief in the wake of their mother’s death is a source of deep fascination for the show – which is fair enough, perhaps, as the Windsors are privileged beyond reckoning, and wealth and celebrity always come at a price. But the princes are also sons who lost a mother, and The Crown leaves itself open to the charge of exploiting their pain.
And then there is “ghost Diana”. Morgan denied tabloid reports that the late princess of Wales would return from the great beyond. But she sort of does, with both Charles (Dominic West) and Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) having conversations with the character after her death. Is this deft screenwriting or ghoulish garnishing? Viewers will have different opinions. What’s certain is that, after six seasons, The Crown is not about to go quietly into the night.
