The Crown, season 2 review: Claire Foy's scandal-hit Queen will get even the most ardent republican weeping
A year ago, journalists were rubbing their hands in anticipation of a right royal scandal. US streaming service Netflix was about to commit an outrageous act of lèse-majesté and Buckingham Palace would go into meltdown. Except that this didn’t happen – shots of a young Prince Philip’s (played by Matt Smith) backside notwithstanding, The Crown was a remarkable piece of quality drama which skilfully humanised the British Royal Family.
This second series, which begins with the Suez Crisis in 1956 and ends with the birth of Prince Edward in 1964, is likely to sit less well with the Windsors. It opens with fissures in the marriage between the Queen (Claire Foy) and Philip amid reports of the Duke of Edinburgh goating around the globe with Australian equerry Mike Parker.
There is also Margaret’s fiancé, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, aka Lord Snowdon (Matthew Goode), luxuriating in bisexual ménages-à-trois, and several accusations (including one from Jackie Kennedy) that the Queen is out of touch and living in a stagnant sort of hinterland.
That’s not to say that The Crown is setting out to shock. Peter Morgan’s drama, directed by Stephen Daldry among others, is tasteful, emotionally rich and teeming with smart historical observations. Indeed when Armstrong-Jones is shown with his latest conquest, making the beast with two backs in his Chelsea studio, it jars horribly – a bit like finding a copy of Penthouse in the Royal Library at Windsor.
In all, series two has slightly less to say than the first, even if it is covering rather more tumultuous times. The first three episodes, depicting the Duke of Edinburgh’s interminable tour, lack dramatic pace, while the political manoeuvrings of Egyptian president, Colonel Nasser, and his followers, are reduced to a sort of mob mentality which feels more than a little patronising.
But two standout performances, from Vanessa Kirby as Margaret and Anton Lesser as Harold Macmillan (who replaced the disgraced Anthony Eden after Suez), means that The Crown improves significantly from episode four. Kirby’s performance – part spoilt princess, part frightened little girl, part cynical soak – manages to capture Margaret’s many complex shades, and the tormented relationship with Armstrong-Jones is well caught by Goode’s subtly spiteful performance.
In reality, he was far worse. He would write Margaret charming little notes and leave them lying around the house. One read: “You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you.”
Macmillan, regarded by many today as emblematic of the ancien régime, is given an empathetic makeover by Lesser. Here is a man with a certain anxiety over his quest for power and whose professional insecurity is deepened by his guffawing wife Dorothy’s (Sylvestra le Touzel) frequent assignations with Lord Boothby.
The slight and nimble Lesser looks nothing like the real Macmillan, but this has never been a problem in The Crown. So well delineated is each character, and there is such conviction from the majority of the cast, that you tend to forget that the real Queen doesn’t have an upside-down mouth or that Prince Philip’s eyes aren’t actually pee-holes in the snow.
As with the first series, The Crown excels in its two isolated episodes which have very little to do with the continuing narrative. The first, a story new to me, is that of John Grigg, the 2nd Baron Altrincham (played by rising RSC actor John Heffernan), who complained that the Queen sounded like a “priggish schoolgirl” and was attacked outside the recently opened ITV studios by a member of the League of Empire Loyalists, a sort of lunatic fringe bristling with anger over the attenuation of British overseas territories.
Taking on board Grigg’s criticism with an astonishing degree of equanimity, the Queen eventually took Grigg’s advice to televise her Speech.
How much do the cast of The Crown look like the real Royal Family?
The penultimate episode is the one which is likely to get even the most ardent republican weeping. As young Prince Charles is denied the nurturing effects of Eton by his father who wants his “namby-pamby” son to have a miserable time at his own alma mater, Gordonstoun, so the action slips back in time to Philip’s Thirties childhood.
We see a stubborn boy, respected by the Nazis and bullied by his classmates. Only when he loses his sister in an air crash do the upper fourth rally round and Philip feels that he belongs. The flash forwards to Philip’s thorny relationship with his son is where Smith really convinces – showing a sort of jealousy towards the future heir, because he knows that his role as a father never truly holds weight in a world dictated by protocol.
As with series one, though, it is Claire Foy’s consistently sympathetic portrait of the Queen that is at the centre of The Crown. Sensible as a pair of Brevitts, tough as a Barbour wax jacket, and with an unwavering commitment to serve the nation, Foy’s Queen is a character you root for at every stage of the drama. That her replacement for series three is to be the irrepressibly likeable Olivia Colman would suggest that, despite the odd whiff of unearthed skeletons, The Crown is likely to only strengthen the Windsors’ reputation across the globe.
The Crown is released on Netflix on December 8
