But Will There Be Corgis? Thread Where We Discuss Netflix's THE CROWN

can't believe that the grim march of time has caused the shadow of DRAMATIC IRONY to fall over even the work of koo stark, what a sad world we live in

sorry to bring my *unavowed* class hatred to the thread VG, but it's the best series on netflix right now - I will admit!

Koo Stark's greatest cinematic role as the eponymous Justine in the sexploitation version of the Marquis de Sade, er, bodice ripper turns up on the London Live channel every now and again - after midnight, of course

Koo Stark's dad, Wilbur Stark, produced the Hammer film Vampire Circus and was an executive producer on John Carpenter's The Thing!

watching the carol thatcher scenes i'm reminded of a story swellsy once told me -- that he encountered CT on some radio four "funny" show (she was a presenter, he maybe weote for it) and told her very clearly what everyone thought of her mum, and claimed to me to be astonished that she was upset at his forthrightness lol

calz also reminding me of swells in this regard :D

lol calzino all good! class hatred keeps us honest

lol it has been v amusing itt to see avowed royal haters revealing their deep knowledge of the enemy <3 (myself included)

in the version of the swells story i remembered, this all happened on the occasion of MT's death, but i just checked and MT survived swellsy by four years, which seems a bit of an injustice

pls explain wtf you are talking abt, i am so lost

seething swells = NME 80's/90's writer from Bradford/Swindon who was a formative influence on lots of us ilxers of a certain age

he was extremely left wing and voluble about it

lots of UK ilxers I should have said!

his spirit is very much in the Fagan episode (ep5 I think?)and also the spirit of Yosser Hughes gobbing off at job centre staff as the only means of retaining some vestige of dignity.

^^ ^^
well probs a bit of a stretch, but I am rather fresh rn!

got it! thx

queen: "i thought we didn't listen to chatter?"
margaret: "i listen to nothing else!"

I didn't know about the Fagan incident(s) at all. Apparently pretty much everything depicted is true right up until he has an actual conversation with Lizo?

does she say " i know you and you cannot sing"?

i remember the story at the time being that they had a conversation!

that doesn't mean they did but it was definitely recounted that way

i suspect he may not have said "yr palace is shabby and yr paint is peeling, you should hire me as your decorator" -- which is the kind of good thing to say no one thinks to say to two days afterwards

they shd have hired him imo

he showed great initiative

drama-wise, i thought focusing in on him was a good way to show the social impact of Thatcher, down to her barking over the radio at every waking moment etc

i read elsewhere that Fagan irl was just up for a bit of a lark rather than desperate to talk to her (& he also said he had done a ton of mushrooms that took him 2 years to come down from) ... or something to that effect. cant find link tho :(

oh and that line he says to his council member - “I’m not mentally ill. I’m just poor” was v good

also was that the ep where you see the mouse dart across the floor in one of the rooms? lol

Am I imagining it or is that building up to Liz having to roll over and show her soft side over Diana's death, because they were worried that if she didn't, the government wouldn't give them the money they needed to do up Buckingham Palace? Or am I years apart on those two things? (I know I could google this.)

as calz noted upthread yosser hughes in boys from the black stuff (a TV series broadcast the same year) was an out-of-work character endlessly confronted by impossible bureaucracy and frustrating obstacles: his much-repeated phrase was "gissajob" (also nutting ppl lol) (they deserved it tho, probably -- anyway i think fagan's story has been written to resemble yosser's more than it possibly did, but if so it was a good decision

it's abt 15 years apart isn't it? (without googling lol, someone else can do that)

also was that the ep where you see the mouse dart across the floor in one of the rooms? lol

Nah, that was the episode where she meets with all of the kids to figure out her favorite.

Holy shit, Buckingham Palace is currently undergoing a £369 million refurbishment. Mmmmm, value.

that catches a lot of mice

"mr fagan did say it was looking a bit dreary"

I am, again, catching up, so let me note for the record that I've seen not a single convincing screen portrait of LBJ and The Crown's is the worst yet: the Kennedy definition of Uncle Cornpone.

probably needs its own thread but we shd dig into why impersonations of politicians -- some maybe more than others -- are so hard, i think it's interesting

The Kurgan as LBJ and Dexter as JFK, they were both casting fails imo. It's a long time since I watched it but wasn't Tom Wilkinson's LBJ in Selma at least decent or not terrible?

I'd imagine most actors doing LBJ would have a good listen to the LBJ Whitehouse tapes to crib some of his off camera sweary mannerisms, but not a good approach for a bad actor perhaps.

LBJ was the classic protean politician: he would not have behaved like Foghorn Leghorn around anyone he was in awe of. Also, I've read Caro, Zelizer, etc: he did NOT turn into a lunatic at the mention of the Kennedys.

Wilkinson got his energy, but I haven't yet seen the performance that understands his extraordinary sweetness and charm when he wanted to deploy them, or even his intelligence.

yeah LBJ and JFK were both definite fails

I don't believe for a moment can quote Saul Bellow (Dangling Man wtf!), let alone know who he is.

*Charles can

Actually I don't think Charles is as dim as either his sons or his late wife.

I doubt he could, or would, quote Saul Bellow though!

charles definitely reads, tho besides the thoughts of his beloved pal sir laurens van der post, it seems like it's mainly fingerwaggy tomes of non-fiction essays, the great, the good and the commonwealth highborn around the earnestly setting out ways to make the world better that don't involve e.g. abolishing the monarchy (j. c. kapur's our future: consumerism or humanism, hrh sultan nazrin shah's reflections and recollections)

the only fiction that i can find approval of on a quick google is lol harry potter (and tbf that's camilla saying he likes doing the voices for the grandchildren) plus apparently he enjoys quoting wordswrth

bellow won the nobel prize which is exactly the kind of fact i wd expect the more diligent royals to have absorbed and processed for regurgitation in the kinds of cultural conversation the front-facers have to have -- so in this narrow sense he has certainly heard of bellow

dutiful i think mean, rather than diligent

he's written several of that fingerwaggy kind of book himself in fact

:D

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61zTuNOifuL.jpg

i remember the story at the time being that they had a conversation!

that doesn't mean they did but it was definitely recounted that way

Randy Quaid did the best LBJ that I ever saw, in the 80's or 90's on some network miniseries.

xp

it's a good season. The Die and Charles show is a drag at times but then amusing when he gets pwned by the Aussie pm and his own mum for being a pathetic self-absorbed drip who everyone but Camilla despises!

I will be interested to see if any good articles get written by people young enough to not really remember the whole Diana story beyond her being dead now. Obviously as a fifty-year-old person living in the affected islands, the whole thing is such a part of the fabric of my life, I could never watch the show with any kind of distance or objectivity, but I'm curious about whether the programm is as loaded or foreshadowy as we all think it is, just because we know what it's foreshadowing, and what it's loaded with.
I wouldn't have thought it was possible not to know the details, but I heard John Mulaney and Nick Kroll talking to Pete Davidson on Oh Hello, the P'dcast about it, and he only had the very vaguest idea of who Diana even was. I know he's not exactly renowned for his razor-sharp brain, but he can't be the only one who doesn't really know about her.
Even when they were talking about it on Gogglebox the other night, and they were playing the scene from the engagement press conference, all the parents knew what Charles was going to say before he said it, because it was such a big deal at the time. I don't really remember that at all.