“Don’t you love the farce? My fault, I fear. I thought I’d want what you want. Sorry, my dear. Where are the crowns? Send in the crowns. There ought to be crowns ...”
Yes, it’s time for the further adventures of the crownheads, the land bosses, the sceptre wielders, the big-chair preservation society or, if you insist, the British royal family, who are the subject of Peter Morgan’s increasingly strange, regally themed, mass audience art project, The Crown (Netflix).
As you probably know, the boss of Britain for ages was a woman called The Queen. Her ancestors seized power, and therefore she and her dysfunctional clan got to live in castles, cosplay as 19th-century rulers and cut ribbons at community centres. The stakes for royal discomfort decreased somewhat between Richard III’s “I have murdered people and now people want to murder me” and Charles and Diana’s “It’s hard being a famous person” (which I find strangely less relatable than the murder thing). It’s no surprise, then, that some of the best episodes have been from the perspective of side characters who have more visceral wants and needs and more self-driven arcs – people such as Margaret Thatcher and Mohamed Al Fayed.
The Queen, who can regenerate like Doctor Who (she has been excellently played by Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton), frequently spends whole episodes peering at things imperiously (being imperious is literally her job) and commenting on stuff we have already seen. And so Morgan, in his desperation, must make stuff up.
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Pedants quibble when creators divert from fact in historical dramas. But I say pshaw to accuracy. Did Shakespeare strive for accuracy in his depiction of Henrys IV through VIII? Did the creators of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds baulk at turning Cardinal Richelieu into an anthropomorphic fox? Did Ridley Scott even read a history book before making his film about Napoleon from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Accuracy is for dullards.
If anything, Morgan doesn’t deviate from truth enough. Instead of inventing sword fights for them or turning one of them into a talking beagle (arguably he has done this with Prince Philip) or having the queen mother say “dude” while playing an electric guitar, he gives the royals’ lack of activity a sort of granular verisimilitude. The Crown is a beautifully made and acted show. At times I feel like I really am bored off my arse in a room with The Queen.
The main thing Morgan confabulates are not events but conversations. Indeed, many episodes of The Crown could be called Conversations That Probably Didn’t Happen. There are conversations that probably didn’t happen between Charles and The Queen, between Diana and Dodi Fayed, between Dodi Fayed and his father, Mohamed, and between Charles and a ... guh ... guh ... ghost! (At this point I typically pick up my great dane and run away.) Spoiler alert: there is a ghost now.
[ The Crown: ‘I never imagined it as Diana’s ghost in the traditional sense’Opens in new window ]
The new series – the sixth and final – is concerned, tragically and slightly voyeuristically, with the final days of Diana. She is played very well by Elizabeth Debicki, who has perfected the shy-eyed Diana gaze. (Instructions: Tilt your head down while having your large eyes look upward. Warning: this may not work if you’re a large middle-aged man with small eyes.) I always like the clever vignettes and framing devices Morgan uses from episode to episode. The first of the series begins with an opening sequence that follows a scruffy Parisian walking his dog, only for him to then hear the terrible crash that took Diana and Dodi’s lives. Then we flash back to Diana being wooed by Dodi on a yacht. The pop-soundtracked scenes of Diana sports-car-ing, private-jetting and speed-boating about with abandon are contrasted throughout with her tweedy former in-laws glooming about in rainy vintage Scotland.
The second episode begins with engaging mock documentary interviews with two very different photographers – the swaggering paparazzo who snapped Diana and Dodi kissing on the yacht and the humble small-town portraitist who photographed Charles and his sons skimming stones in Scotland – before going on to depict the PR battle Diana and Charles fought across the newspapers. It all looks great. It’s generally acted with nuance. (None of the impressive cast is a Spitting Image puppet, even though this would actually be quite funny.)
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And then, in episode three, it all goes off the rails. This episode is filled with arguably prurient, definitely unprovable conjecture about Diana’s final day. Diana is depicted refusing a marriage proposal from Dodi after getting caught in a nightmarish situation where she is stuck in Paris thanks to his hapless machinations. There are final conversations with William and Harry over the phone followed by frightening scenes in which paparazzi chase them around the city. And then it ends with the sound of screeching brakes.
Episode four, which takes in the aftermath of that fatal crash, is, in many places, very upsetting: Charles’s breaking down, The Queen’s stony incomprehension and the traumatised young princes walking in a procession behind their mother’s coffin are all viscerally sad. But Morgan also decides to introduce the character of Ghost Diana and everything goes a bit The Muppet Christmas Carol.
I’m not averse to the idea of ghosts. I like it when Shakespeare does ghosts. Diana’s ghost appears, firstly, to Prince Charles and, secondly, to The Queen herself. In both instances she utters comforting, wise banalities that feel like things that Diana would be unlikely to think and that Charles and The Queen would be unlikely to imagine. “They’re trying to show you who they are, what they feel, what they need,” she says to The Queen about her grieving subjects, which makes me feel like Ghost Diana went to the future and read some books about herself. I mean, would her first ghostly thought really be, “I’ve got to visit that old woman who has been horrible to me and the ex-husband who betrayed me and give them kindly advice”?
Much like the literal crown, I’m not sure what the TV show The Crown is for
I’d love to see an episode in which the ghost of Diana goes unseen to a George Michael gig, takes the tube, reads some magazines and spends time with her children. (One of the things they’ve done beautifully well here is imagining that warm, playful relationship.) She might even warn people about Prince Andrew. It feels like an extra insult that, even as a ghost, she still has to be a symbol for a modern monarchy and a cautionary lesson for others.
I’m not sure what the writers are trying to do other than force meaningful closure on devastating events that reject it. But, then again, much like the literal crown, I’m not sure what the TV show The Crown is for. What is its overall message other than, “Sometimes there are royals”? Maybe beautifully crafted scenes from the lives of the monarchs are enough.
But in this episode I really wanted the Mystery Machine to roll up and whip off the ghost’s mask to reveal that it has just been old Mr Morgan from the abandoned funfair all along. “And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you pesky kids!” he’d say. And then he would tell us what’s coming up in the final episodes. My prediction? More ghosts and maybe a robot.
