I felt at some points she was superb, but the mistake that was made was they had 1979 and early 80s Maggie but being played as she was after she left office in 1990, they went straight in with an old lady Maggie.
I'm rewatching the series, as my wife had never seen it. We had just completed episode seven of series 3, she seemed to lose all enthusiasm when she saw that the next episode introduces Camila. We've always disagreed about Charles and Diana. She was obsessed with the royal wedding when it happened, that it was some sort of fairy tale romance... while I always thought that having to marry somebody that your family selected and being unable to marry the person that you loved was the furthest thing from a fairy tale possible. I can see some conflict in her because the series has done a great job of making Charles sympathetic - his utterly miserable schooling, his adventure in Wales, etc. I haven't seen any of series 4 and I really want to get to it.
I am nearing the end of Season 4 and I must say, the somewhat sympathetic take on Charles in regard to his marriage to Diana is not what I was expecting. Now, of course, Charles is also portrayed as generally cold, indifferent, and jealous toward his wife, so it's not like he's portrayed as the Good Guy, but there is this strong sense that Charles is continually shoved to the side and silenced and that no one gives a hang about what he wants. The second to last episode in the 4th season is particularly heartbreaking from Charles' perspective - the guy just can't catch a break!
"Charles and Diana" have ruined The Crown, it has become a poorly written soap opera with pretty awful acting (especially from those 2)
The family business required that he marry the last available virgin from a pretty small pool of potential candidates. I always thought the "fairy tale" thing put a rather obnoxious burden on the "handsome prince." What if the "beautiful maiden" is an uninteresting twit? Is he obligated to marry her just because he rescued her from the dragon and he was already in love with the bar maid in the next village over? I have my own problems with Charles, particularly his support of homeopathy which is, and always has been, complete and utter hooey. But all the money in the world is worthless without being free to love who you love.
I've been watching it off and on with my wife, who has liked the first few series but not the most recent one. I think it's suffering from the comic book syndrome, but with actual events. The whole series starts out with Britain almost being destroyed in World War II. It moved on through societal and economic upheavals, domestic terrorism, etc... Now, the big dramatic tentpoles are that the prince doesn't like his wife, and the queen doesn't like the prime minister. It's not that these aren't dramatic elements, but they are given the same dramatic weight as mining disasters and IRA bombings.
I suspect Charles and Diana were simply a product of the times in which they lived. Perhaps prior generations had too much respect for the monarchy to make such a public spectacle of their every move. In another time, even a marriage as mismatched as theirs might have been more successful without the spotlight being on Diana the whole time just to keep up the Fairy Tale Princess angle.
Well, the story is the story. The Queen's public life was one that began with the most dramatic events of the 20th century but some of those latter decades were pretty dull, at least as regards events that directly involved her and her family. Frankly, I thought the whole series was going to be a long tabloid snore because I wasn't aware of of lot of the events that happened during her reign. I think they've done a pretty good job of keeping it interesting even if the stakes are rather trivial.
Too bad World War III didn’t break out in 1972 so that the series could continue have sufficient gravitas for you. For all of the “this isn’t accurate” complaints about the show, they can’t rewrite history to make the 70s and 80s sufficiently serious for you. But I suspect that the people who were killed in IRA bombings, as well as those, like Thatcher, who barely survived them, found them sufficiently serious. From all I can gather, beyond that, the Thatcher era certainly had plenty of serious real life drama, crises, and ideological battles. As for the “the prince doesn’t like his wife” plot, number one, it actually happened, and, number two, it accurately reflects larger societal changes that were going on in the 70s and 80s. I remember growing up and seeing my fathers’ parents, clearly living out a loveless marriage, sleeping in separate bedrooms, not really communicating, because that’s what people of their Depression/World War II generation did. They kept a stiff upper lip and soldiered on in bad marriages. Which is exactly the advice the Queen tries to give to Charles on several occasions. For better or for worse, men and women of his generation didn’t accept that advice. Having seen my parents’ generation live out exactly the same sort of acceptance of divorce and “following your heart” drama that marks Charles and Diana’s story, I found their whole story pretty relevant and interesting.
I am halfway through season four. I started watching the series about a month ago. I’m really enjoying the series, acting is great, writing is authentic, and it’s definitely beautiful to look at. Which is the general consensus. The Princess Margarets are both really incredible. Real depth there. My only real complaint is the fact that there’s no 60s music at all- when British music reigned here in America, and certainly there in England! There’s been plenty of ‘cameos’ of 70s and 80s music. I don’t know why they ignored music from the 60s! Strange.
Probably because of licensing fees, I would imagine? Although I’m sure licensing “Starman” didn’t come cheap. The BBC show Call the Midwife used a Kinks song to mark the passing of time into the 60s, if I recall correctly, doubtless because the Beatles and the Stones were too expensive to license. Maybe the success of the Crown has also increased its budget to license music in recent seasons.
Almost all of these dramas suffer the same fate. They start w compelling characters against the back drop of history, and eventually evolve into a soap opera. A recent example was Downton Abbey. But so many others. I agree this season was the weakest of the series. But the girl who plays Diana is cute so there is that.
Just acquired the DVD set of the third season, but decided we must begin by re-watching the first season. It's going to be a Royal Procession. The comments about soap operas resonate; watching Meghan and Harry performing for Oprah a few days ago made me ill. Diana and Charles, Meghan and Harry - tragedy becomes farce. BTW the first season has so many very dark scenes - post-war shortage of electricity and lighting? Half the time I can hardly see who I am looking at!
I just learned that Imelda Staunton is taking over the role of Queen Elizabeth in Season 5. All I can say is, I hope she can really blow the doors off that role because I just don't see it.
Colman was spot-on. I think they could have kept her for the rest of the series and it would have worked out perfectly. If they really needed someone older they could have had Helen Mirren reprise her performance from The Queen. She was great in that movie.
Having not gotten that far in the series, I can agree with your observation. Gawd, Anthony-Armstrong Jones was a smarmy manipulator!
Just watched the episode where the young Philip is in a huge Nazi parade for the funeral of his relative. Made me wonder if that was true to history, and that lead me to an entire article on the subject in the National Post. Excerpt Were Prince Philip’s family really Nazis? In the episode Paterfamilias, there are a series of flashbacks that allude to Prince Philip’s rather Nazi-filled childhood. He’s shown living in Nazi Germany, his sister is a Nazi and he’s even photographed in a parade of Nazis. Much to Buckingham Palace’s chagrin, all of that is extremely true. The son of a broken — yet royal — household, Philip was passed around to numerous European branches of his family during his youth, eventually ending up in Nazi Germany for a brief period during his early teens. His sisters married into the German aristocracy, and many became closely tied to the Nazi party. One of them, Sophie, even named her child Karl Adolf in honour of Adolf Hitler. His sister Cecile was killed in a 1937 air crash, although the trip had nothing to do with Philip, as is implied in The Crown. However, at Cecile’s funeral in the German city of Darmstadt, Philip was photographed as part of a procession packed with uniformed Nazis, including Herman Goering himself. Only a few years after that photo was taken, however, Philip was an officer in the Royal Navy battling Axis forces that included his in-laws. Tristin Hopper 2017 Was Prince Philip really raised by Nazis? Fact-checking season two of The Crown | National Post About a less momentous issue, why did the young actor playing Philip have such curly hair - did the older Philip have his hair straightened?
Just started Season 3. Hate to go on about this, but why are all the indoor scenes so damn dark! Onward then. From a Jack to a King song, very funny. Queen looking at new stamp designs. ""Old Bat" portrait! Blunt sqeezing that wheeze Prince Philip. Made me wonder, did that portrait by Stephen Ward ever come to light?
Margaretology. Had to look this up - got "The show suggests it was responsible for America granting Britain a crucial financial bailout. This is not correct. There was a bailout in September 1965, but it was not due to the dinner party." As someone else noted earlier - little awareness of the Beatles. Did they help save Britain from whatever Balance of Payments whatever...
