As The Crown series trots on toward modern-day events, Netflix’s sumptuous masterpiece of royal history and tawdry gossip approaches its inevitable end point: basically becoming a Lifetime movie.
I don’t mean that to be trolling. That’s music to some fans’ ears, the sound of a city’s population of feral cats in heat gathered outside your bedroom to others. But it is a curious dissonance that has grown more noticeable with each passing season of The Crown.
Here is a show that defines prestige television. It is expensive. It is ornate. It has acting and design and history. What subject could encompass the idea of “prestige” more accurately than the actual queen? But, when you really distill it, The Crown is also just fancy tabloid-whispering, streaming on Netflix.
There was a bit of remove in earlier seasons that excused the series’ more uncouth aspects. We were OK with how it fictionalized the bedrooms-and-boardrooms bickering and conniving when we understood that it was all obviously educated make-believe. After all, the events of those earlier seasons happened so long ago. Of course we’re just making up those private moments.
But now, we’re encountering the Diana and Charles of it all. We’re no longer watching the struggles and turmoil that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip—plus their family—went through, as if it were some eye-opening origin story. Instead, we are up to speed on the salaciousness and juiciness. it. We expect to be validated in our existing knowledge and opinions of these figures. We are craving certain fights, memorable dramatic moments, and meticulous recreations of what, in a more modern age, is historic iconography. (Diana in her “revenge dress” does not disappoint.)
For most of The Crown’s run so far, the series has seemed above all of that pandering. Now, however, it seems to be leaning into it. Maybe you’ll really enjoy that. Maybe, though, you’ll wish you were watching something…more.
Any fan will recall what an ambitious and admirable creative experiment The Crown was when it began—and it still is. To endeavor to tell SO MUCH history, but have a clear plan on how to do it, was something that hadn’t, been executed successfully before. I don’t have to embellish The Crown’s wild, unexpected triumph in accomplishing that.
Viewers’ obsession with this series, not to mention the constant discourse that surrounds it, speaks to that. Despite its use of a rotating cast of actors portraying these real-life figures at different periods of history, the show has somehow skirted “gimmick territory” entirely. Instead, these age-appropriate recastings have amplified the surprising emotional quotient of the show.
That emotion is what seems to be starkly missing in Season 5.
I’m not sure if it’s a flaw in the series itself. Outside of flattering some members of the royal family with borderline-egregious glow-ups in attractiveness, it’s certainly not the fault of the casting and the actors. One will not be surprised to hear that esteemed thespians like Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce, Lesley Manville, Dominic West, Jonny Lee Miller, Olivia Williams, and, as we’ve all been desperate to see, Elizabeth Debicki as Diana are immaculate in their portrayals. Read those names. Of course they are. (When The Crown once again dominates the Emmys, it will deserve it.)
But whereas the previous seasons found my heart swelling at the show’s emotionally lavish depictions of how monumental events in British history reverberated in the lives of the royals behind closed doors, my heart feels cold this time around. It’s as frozen as it is each time that I, years ago, would pick up a gossip rag at the checkout line, or, now, click on a ridiculous Daily Mail exposé or—don’t judge—a Deuxmoi Instagram story.
There’s a sense this time around of, “Get to the good stuff!” The frustrating thing, I’m sure, is that there is no blame to be assigned to the series for that. The Crown is as engrossing (and endlessly watchable) as ever. The subject matter is the culprit.
That said, the show does seem to be leaning into that obviousness in a way it never did before. The premiere episode alone plays as a cheeky Cliff’s Notes of the debate surrounding the value of the royals at this moment in time in the ’90s.
Much of the episode focuses on an article that Charles (West) helped orchestrate, accusing his mother and everything associated with her reign of being “irrelevant,” “old,” “expensive,” and “out of touch.” The queen demands that the government helps to restore her beloved Britannia ship, which is used for her travel and vacations. While once trotted out as the epitome of status and beloved regality—as depicted in a flashback featuring The Crown’s original Elizabeth, Claire Foy—the vessel is showing its age.
“Sentimentally, I think we’d all prefer to stick with her, but we have to be realistic about the cost of repairs when she’s so obviously past her best,” Philip (Pryce) tells Elizabeth, a not-so-veiled metaphor. “It’s the first time I've started to consider the unthinkable… a replacement.”
This is the first time I’ve felt like The Crown is doing something it always seemed to be above: fan service.
Maybe that’s the trap of a show like this as it approaches modern day. And, to be fair, the fan service isn’t always bad.
It must be said just how excellent Debicki is as Diana. She arrives emotionally formed, which is to say utterly fed up and, yet, defeated. Her waifish frame towers over every co-star, and Debicki has nailed that simultaneously aggressive and wounded gaze downward—a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog of all the storms that surrounded her.
We get the infamous 1995 Panorama interview. (Debicki is transcendent in this scene, despite judgements over the side-by-side Twitter clip with the real Diana that went viral.) We get the divorce proceedings. We get the tantalizing stuff, too, that we’d all like to think happened—but have no proof actually did—like Diana confiding her woes in her inappropriately young sons.
That’s where we veer into Lifetime territory. It’s impossible, in these arcs, to separate fact from fiction—which is likely why the palace crusaded so hard for the show to include a disclaimer saying as much ahead of this season. Each time we’re given an intimate glimpse—a conversation in a car ride, bedroom, or what have you—it reads as much based in fact as the real events, like that Panorama interview. It’s not! But that doesn’t matter. We now take The Crown at face value as the unimpeachable truth.
The wonkiness of that is most evident in the divorce episode, which also follows “normal” couples going through the proceedings, in an attempt to normalize (I guess?) what Diana and Charles went through. That episode may be the season’s biggest misfire, which presents its own uncomfortable truth: The Diana and Charles bits are the least interesting parts of this season of The Crown.
Maybe that’s the Lifetime effect, too. You can’t make more interesting what we already know.
But the less salacious moments are more exciting than one would expect. An exploration of the royals’ devotion to Russia is fascinating. A standalone episode about what power means that centers around Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) and Mohamed al-Fayed (Salim Daw), who were part of Diana’s last days, is the highlight of the season. And, God save me, the royal I found myself most invested in this season was Philip, with his suitably icky, but intriguing, friendship with family friend Penny Knatchbull (Natasha McElhone).
That all goes to show, however, that The Crown is best when it surprises—in its own, The Crown-y way. When it doesn’t, when we’re left with the obvious, we get something that just seems… trashier than we would expect from this show. With less budget, there are parts of it that could be a cable TV movie.
To be fair, this show is as soothing and as luxurious as ever. But it finally met its enemy: Lifetime. Er… time.
