The Crown, series 6 part 2, review: a once fine drama abdicates with a miserable whimper
Farewell then to The Crown (Netflix), a show that started out as a sublime period drama – interesting history, fabulous frocks, a luminous Claire Foy – and ends as a Hallmark Channel movie in which the Queen has a nightmare about Tony and Cherie Blair being crowned at Westminster Abbey to a new national anthem of Things Can Only Get Better, and William and Kate’s dreamy first kiss is interrupted by a royal protection officer announcing the death of the Queen Mother.
In these six final episodes, nobody is happy – save for Carole Middleton, who has set out to bag her daughter a prince by any means necessary and literally hangs out the royal bunting when she succeeds. William mopes, Harry sulks, and the only time the Queen shows a flicker of humour is when she announces the results of the Grand National steeplechase to guests at Charles and Camilla’s wedding. The rest of the time she is a picture of misery, ridden with anxiety about the monarchy’s declining popularity and looking gloomily ahead to the succession when “a tired, white-haired, geriatric Queen will hand over to a tired, white-haired, geriatric Prince of Wales”.
We pick up in 1997, shortly after Diana’s death, and end in 2005. There are new, young cast members: Ed McVey as William, Luther Ford as Harry and Meg Bellamy as Kate. McVey at least has a hint of William about him, and gets the accent “abite rite”. But the casting requirements for Harry clearly didn’t go beyond “ginger” and they may as well have hired Spuggy from Byker Grove, because instead of a cute 13-year-old (Harry’s age when this batch of episodes begins) we have 23-year-old Ford, who looks more like Spud from Trainspotting.
The blossoming relationship between Kate and Wills is sweet but dull. The real hatchet job is on Carole, a Waitrose Mrs Bennet, clawing her way to the top of the social scale with crampons and an axe. Played with a mad glint in her eye by Eve Best, she is fixated with William to an insane degree, and her desire to exploit her daughter’s looks makes for queasy viewing. We first meet mother and daughter on a shopping trip, where Kate picks out a sensible dress. Carole dismisses it instantly and chooses something more eye-catching: “It’ll show off your figure, which the boys will love.” Kate is 15 at this point.
It is a fact that Kate swapped her university choice at the last minute from Edinburgh to St Andrews, and enrolled on the same Raleigh International expedition as William during their gap year. According to The Crown (and to sources including Tina Brown’s gossipy book, The Palace Papers), this was part of Carole’s masterplan. For that fabled night at the fashion show, Kate calls home to Bucklebury and tells her mother that William will be in the audience. “Heels, not flats,” Carole instructs. “You want to show off those legs, It’s our duty to make use of the assets God has given us.”
The relationship between Charles and Camilla (Dominic West and an underused Olivia Williams) doesn’t get much of a look-in, although you will be struck by the notion of a 57-year-old man having to ask his mother’s permission to get married, and weeping with relief when she says yes. This series is good press for Charles, seen trying to do his best as a father in the wake of Diana’s death.
As for the Queen? Played for the final time by Imelda Staunton, she’s still beady-eyed and priggish, more concerned about the fate of the monarchy – and herself – than her children. Her storylines come out of left-field. Did she really turn to Tony Blair for advice on how to be more popular? And did she really steal a kiss with a black American GI in the basement of the Ritz on VE Day, and come home with his chewing gum still in her mouth, as suggested here?
The latter is teased in an episode about the death of Princess Margaret, which features flashbacks to the night that the two princesses sneaked out of Buckingham Palace to celebrate victory in Europe (that much is fact, the rest a flight of fancy). It is actually the best episode of the lot, because it returns to The Crown’s first principles: blending history with emotional truth. We see Margaret (Lesley Manville) suffer a series of strokes, and the awful accident in which she scalded her feet. Then she and the Queen reminisce about their early lives, and the love between the sisters is movingly portrayed.
It does rather hammer home the point, made more elegantly in the first two series, that the Queen gave up a normal life for one of duty. Towards the end she considers abdicating, and is visited by her younger selves – played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman – to mull things over. Colman says she has been loyal to the crown at the expense of being a mother and it’s time to step down. Foy disagrees, saying Charles would make a mess of it.
Writer Peter Morgan makes the mistake of writing his characters with too much hindsight. So Harry is zero fun and spends his entire time glowering as if he’s in Game of Thrones, because we now know that he was an unhappy teenager and he’s an even unhappier adult. But wasn’t he also a laugh sometimes? The Queen spends the final episode tearily contemplating her demise, but was she really doing that back in 2005 or does Morgan just need a way to throw forward to her death and make his final scenes seem terribly poignant?
So now it’s over. That’s the right decision – Morgan had clearly run out of steam and the Harry and Meghan years would be too much to bear. Netflix has shut down talk of a spin-off. I can think of a reality show that would work, though: The Real Housewives of Bucklebury would be irresistible.
All episodes of The Crown, series 1-6, are available now on Netflix
