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

HELLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/the-crown-1024.jpg

I blew through 3 episodes last night and I'm really enjoying it.

I love how the drama is provided by what's happening, they're not being heavyhanded and adding any excess unnecessary melodrama. I was a bit leery that they might Downton it up too much but it's very restrained.

I've heard they're planning to do SIX seasons, to cover the whole reign. Which...holy shit I'm in if it's going to be like this.

They do a very good job of underlining how the role of king/queen weighs very heavily on the person and the family -- like 'ugh my life would have been so much better if this had not happened to me' --- the duty is underscored very intentionally, and they do a good job of showing how disruptive it is to 'normal' life' (normal being landed aristocracy of course so, yknow, lol) (but still)

Jared Harrris' King George was so good

still finishing episode 2. will be really thankful when the coughing stops. the king is dead. long live the cough.

when he isn't coughing i love his voice though.

which makes sense cuz he comes from royal voice stock.

does this go into brenda's origins as a 12-ft baby-eating lizard-person or nah

xp
you wouldn't say that about his accent in The Expanse.

He is listed as being in 7 eps on imdb so I presume much flashbacking and maybe not so much coughing to come.

lol whut xp

i was wiki-ing the various royal family members and i honestly had forgotten about fergie. i just hadn't thought of her in years. so much info on her house and her house next to her ex's house and that house burning and then her moving back in with her ex and her ex borrowing money from the convicted pedophile who is friends with donald trump and....i think i see why people like royal watching so much. it's endless.

get woke veg: http://www.neonnettle.com/feed/67-david-icke-was-right-5-reasons-the-queen-is-a-bloody-lizard-

lol :D

Casting of Matt Smith as Prince Philip is ludicrous, Phil was impossibly good looking - in an Aryan Master Race way - as a young man, Matt Smith not so much.

i wouldnt go that far, i think Smith embodies some of his inherent charm

http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/54ca8cbb494254fc09953fbb/master/pass/image.jpg

https://lisawallerrogers.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/queen-elizabeth-and-prince-philip-engagement-july-9_1947.jpg

That's impossibly good looking? I'd have sAid Smith was about as gl if not better. A matter of taste I guess but they're about in the same league.

"even his testicles looked like red rosy apples"

ep5 opener: Little Lizzy helping her Dad by pretending to be Archbishop for the coronation gave me all the feels damn this show to hell

<3

also I never knew about that great smog business. 12,000? blimey.

worst killer fog in history.

i was definitely feeling the end of that second episode. DRAMA.

that whole second episode was just really great t.v. kudos!

streaking ahead sorry but

Coronation: a+
They used Edward so cleverly in this episode in particular, drag him to his bitchy lowest in the earlier episodes to allow him a bittersweet moment in the sun, very nicely done

Never gave much thought to actual practicality of walking in the crown

bit of the og magic show

ugh
https://youtu.be/LEDp34MRI20

probably useless storming into a binge thread 11 hours late but we just watched the first episode and i'm super-impressed by john lithgow's spot-on churchill impression through ~actual acting~ and not just gimmickry. i can't imagine what it's like for a showrunner to take an established actor with an already phenomenal legacy and give them something entirely new that will propel their stature even further.

I've heard they're planning to do SIX seasons, to cover the whole reign. Which...holy shit I'm in if it's going to be like this.

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 6 November 2016 07:39 (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and with their intended focus on peripheral members of the monarchy it's easy to see how they'll fill it. the scope for quality drama is mind-blowing.

yeah definitely

I really enjoy lithgow as churchill too. I also enjoy them utilizing churchill in his second prime-ministership as much as they do; post-stroke churchill is not as often shown or used in drama & it is quite fascinating to see that "fading glory" portrayed by such a good actor

i didn't expect there to be as much use of peripheral characters - it definitely helps paint the picture more fully

claire foy looks so uncannily like a close friend of my mum's did when younger that i don't know how to end this post

i already said this on the wolf hall thread but :0

the queen in her old age reminds me of my grandma, and young Lizzy reminds me of my Mum
it's weird all round

capt peter townshend also reminds me of someone i know quite well

plus queen mary (of teck, george vi's mum, with the grey curls) uses the same asthma inhaler as i did as a kid! (tho she has a fancy mouthpiece also)

lol matt smith's face when the the plane lands after his flying lesson (which i just this second watched) is SOOOO DOCTOR WHOOO

so far i haven't mind him his as philip, but he should stay away from airmen's leather helmets

that first scene of his flying lesson with the deadstick landing is a good example of why I like this show.
In a Downton setting there would have been HIGH DRAMA and pleading for the engine to be turned back on and some kind of STAKES and a lot of music

But no

Two chill dudes just kill the engine, chat for a bit, and then deadstick land the plane in a field and it's cool af

yes -- except prince philip has turned into doctor who during the flight :)

this is paywalled only but well worth it on the fog: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n19/neal-ascherson/brown-goo-like-marmite

hmmm, there doesn't seem to be any "yas queen" memes featuring Claire Foy yet. Somebody's asleep at the wheel

Blimey, some of the fog stuff is like Threads.

Halfway through ep 9, one more to go

Every time Phillip disappoints Lizzy I think back to that promise he made to King George that he would stand by her & i get really mad. then I think how incredibly strong she must have been to weather so much without the steadfast support she should have had from him & it makes her a little bit more impressive in my eyes

Envying the Queen Mum's Scottish castle

Still, up against the wall with the lot of them, Bolsheviks had the right idea etc.

yeah I'm not going to go subscribing to Women's Weekly anytime soon

it just gives me an appreciation for the weird difficulties of a job that basically asks you to do nothing

Yeah, I do feel for Phil. He has no job and no real purpose. Maybe he thought he would be doing a lot of the work, or that she would at least share more with him, come to him for advice, that kind of thing? I suppose neither of them realised she'd be thrown into it so soon.

Although I guess that's what all that horse-stud business is about: him having no real job any more, now that he's done his job by her.

idk

they'd been prepping her for queen her whole life, idk what Phil thought would happen

i mean, i'm sympathetic to an extent- it's obv a very unforgiving job esp for surrounding family. but he just seems so stubbornly petulant & not very empathetic to the inherent loneliness she's dealing with

Jared Harris is so good. Bloody love him after this and Mad Men, and fuck it, I'll even take that accent in the Expanse too.

yeah he is A+ perfect in this

i'd love a prequel season showing his wartime years, the family in london after the blitz, etc

It's all so delicately done, reminds me a bit of the early golden british drama era, the Brideshead Revisiteds, very far from the deluge of period fluff in the wake of Downton Abbey

otm

idk what Phil thought would happen

I think he thought that it would be more of a partnership, like Churchill and his wife. He obviously has plenty of good ideas - like televising the coronation.

true

i just hate the petulant absenteeism & carousing

"i'd love a prequel season showing his wartime years, the family in london after the blitz, etc"

A bunch of priv Naziphiles waiting for their government to stop this nonsense and sue for peace might not cut it as a worldwide hit netflix series tbh. I wish next time Netflix have a spare 100m and loads of good actors, they will do a House of Plantagenet epic or something.

There was a short-lived new national newspaper in the UK in the mid-80s called Today, which is referred to about half a dozen times in one episode, always as "the Today newspaper", presumably bcs Peter Morgan thinks no-one will remember or understand. "Hev you seen these stories in the Today newspaper?" "There's a reporter from the Today newspaper on the phone".

I remember that paper lol, Alastair Campbell was the chief political writer.

I just assumed they wanted to make sure American viewers didn't think it was the Today show.

I remember it being in the break room of the shop I was working in, summer of ‘89.

I remember that paper lol, Alastair Campbell was the chief political writer.

Eddie Shah wasn't it?

The alleged paedo connection continues.

I think so, was the gimmick that paper was all in colour? I mean wow this kind of wild technological advance must have been very impressive in the late 80s. But maybe I'm remembering that bit wrong!

Just thinking of some paedo lyrics to the tune of rock the casbah!

In the early 1990s the newspaper printed a column attacking the city of Liverpool and its inhabitants which was accompanied by a photograph showing a large rubbish tip directly behind the city's iconic Liver Building.[citation needed] In reality, no such rubbish tip existed anywhere in the vicinity of the Liver Building; it subsequently emerged that the photograph was a fake created from a composite of images of the buildings and a rubbish tip that was not in Liverpool, although the photograph's caption implied that the image illustrated the supposed poor upkeep of the city.

it was a very classy newspaper or should that be class-war?

I just assumed they wanted to make sure American viewers didn't think it was the Today show.

Fair enough, but why not avoid confusion by saying eg "the Daily Express"?

Oliver Dowden, the UK secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, told the Daily Mail on Saturday that he plans to request that Netflix add a disclaimer before every episode of "The Crown" saying that it's a work of fiction.

here was me thinking they could have gone much harder and featured even more unflattering portrayals of these horrible fuckers and maybe even put in a laugh track when Dickie gets blown up. But these tories think this was an absolute hatchet job!

They should give it a facetious disclaimer, like the one before "Fargo."

“These people were terrible irl also this show is fictionalized”

Plot twist: at the end Lilibet wakes up, ten years old. It was all a dream.

he used to read Town & Country magazine

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3tDS2XSq9bk/UWmxRGW2ovI/AAAAAAAAKUw/aYTjTEfPdjk/s1600/tumblr_ld4e143rEv1qzpdnh.png

We really enjoyed the two most recent ones we've seen, the one about Margaret and the one about South Africa. Though the show does still suffer a bit from on-the-noseness (which I suppose is to be expected), and also the same gauzy, uncanny valley color correction choices that every TV drama currently seems to make.

I've decided at last that I do actually like this show, I especially like how episodic it is

finishing up s3 and

I love Charles Dance's evolution from potential saboteur to defanged gossip lover in the span of just a couple episodes

Buckingham Palace: Catering assistant stole medals and photos https://t.co/ZSEfhmF7oB

— BBC Yorkshire (@BBCLookNorth) November 30, 2020

lol quite an amusing story here: catering assistant get's extra cleaning duties because of covid 19, uses it as an opportunity to rob expensive trinkets from Buckingham palace. Then the dumb fucker tries selling them on e-bay!

"Who is Billy Jo-el?"

LMAO

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-lobbied-for-change-in-law-to-hide-her-private-wealth

The Queen successfully lobbied the government to change a draft law in order to conceal her “embarrassing” private wealth from the public, according to documents discovered by the Guardian.

A series of government memos reveal that Elizabeth Windsor’s private lawyer put pressure on ministers to alter proposed legislation to prevent her shareholdings from being disclosed to the public.

Following the Queen’s intervention, the government inserted a clause into the law granting itself the power to exempt companies used by “heads of state” from new transparency measures.

might be a bit embarrassing for everyone to see what massive wealth you can accumulate by doing fuck all and then being shameless enough to scrounge another £370 million off the state for a bespoke rewire on her yard.

I have seen one episode (#1) of THE CROWN. I think it could be a good concept, and maybe it's like Shakespeare in being about history via the monarchy? I don't doubt it's well made.

But as I just noted on another thread where Prince Philip was mentioned:

... I don't know much about Prince Philip but an odd thing is - many people who presumably don't usually find him hugely sympathetic or interesting seem to watch THE CROWN where he is a major dynamic protagonist?

I think THE CROWN might well be a good idea and well made (I have seen just one episode), but to me it's a bit of a stumbling block that I have spent most of my life thinking that most of the people in it (ie Royals) are not inherently very interesting, intelligent or insightful people, let alone the system they uphold.

... Is this like Shakespeare again, ie: you don't have to think that Richard II or Henry IV or V were genuinely interesting, you just appreciate the play as a play in itself?

it's just a bit of soap opera with a big budget, the people that actually like these Saxe-Coburg freaks were some of its biggest critics.

This latest season isn't that good. It is very hard for me not to see Jimmy McNulty gurning as Charles. He gurns away same as Anderson's Thatcher did.

And I think they are WAY too treading-on-eggshells in their treatment of all the scandal. Which has made for a really weirdly muted season.

I did wonder if one of the reasons I find it boring is because I've watched two other dramatizations of the same events in recent years, so it's just kind of dull? I like Elizabeth Debicki very much, usually, but I'm finding her a bit one-note in this.

lol that's not John Major and posh Dom West is such a dud Charles, especially after the last one nailed him so well. After hours of tedium it turns out the Mohamed Al-Fayed ep has been the only good one. Haven't watched any more.

Agree with these criticisms. McNulty doesn't look a thing like Charles for one; great actor but he makes Charles seem more likeable than he deserved at this point in his life. I am in love with Elizabeth Debicki but the mannerisms she apes (the tilted down head, eyes looking up) seems to affected and unnatural for her. They nailed the hair though.

I'm on episode 6, so far the best episode is the one that focuses almost exclusively on Mohammed al Fayed. I'd watch an entire season of him and Sydney restoring Villa Windsor, ala the Chateau.

Oh, Leslie Manville is great as Margaret though.

wtf was with the whole carriage riding with Natascha McElhone? I mean who would not enjoy that, but really, did that need to be a big part of the second episode?

I had no idea he even did that as a hobby. I think the idea was to insinuate he had some kind of weirdly-too-close companionship with that woman. I agree though, it didnt need that overlong "hey lets refurbish this old thing and ride it aroun the grounds" montage.

BTW whoever was playing Cherie Blair was SO spot on, thought it was actually her for 1.5 seconds.

I had no idea he even did that as a hobby. I think the idea was to insinuate he had some kind of weirdly-too-close companionship with that woman.

tbh, I was more interested in this kind of esoteria than in the big sweep of The Divorce, which has been very well covered elsewhere already. The one thing I did like about the Charles/Diana/Camilla stuff (which I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to at the time) was that the infamous tampon phonecall was picked up by an amateur radio operator, and wasn't the result of a phone tap or deliberate listening device.

i don't even understand how that was technically possible

Me neither, and maybe it's nonsense. When I googled it just now there's a lot of "believed to have been" and "allegedly", so maybe it's all crap, but that is the story everyone went with at the time.

You used to be able to scan and hear mobile calls in the pre-digital signal era which was around that time. you had to have the right gear. my brother had an emergency services scanner and one xmas mid 90s i do recall listening in on calls.

Got to agree, this series just seemed very weak and too happy to give excess time to stories covered better elsewhere.

It seemed remarkably keen to subvert the version of pretty much every character from that previously established too:

The Queen has become some sort of Victorian Values dinosaur, inflexible to change and utterly out of touch with reality
Charles is some Machiavellian genius playing 4d chess to make his future cushy
Diana is a vacuous Sloane interested only in clothes (ok this may well be accurate but they made her far more sympathetic before)
Ann has become a double agent
Andrew is an arse (see Diana comment)

Given this went up to 1997, amazed to see what a free ride al-Fayed got considering by then there had been Cash For Questions, the Johnathon Aitken/Saudi scandal and the ITV documentary about his sexual harassment of staff at Harrods. Will be interesting to see how they deal with his friendship with Michael Jackson, if they bother (although surely he'll appear given the scale of Dodi Death Conspiracy from him.

The final series is going to be bizarre. Presumably episode 1 is the death of Diana (given it's 6 weeks after the end of S5). Golden Jubilee will probably get an episode to itself. Margaret and the Queen Mother die only 7 or so weeks apart so maybe they squash them into one episode? Charles & Camilla's marriage as one? Diamond jubilee and the start of withdrawal from duties. Lockdown and death of Philip. Platty Joobs and her death.

That only leaves 3 episodes for other threads. India tour in 97 leading into Millennium might be a good idea for ep2, maybe with devolution in the middle (things pull apart then hope brings together). Dislike of Blair/NI peace accord could be a politics one.

Probably going to uh "touch on" the sweatless nonce too, surely?

Imelda Staunton's presence just completely changes the character of this for me. Can't shake the Umbrage image, which means that the monarchy is the Ministry of Magic, the palace is Hogwarts, Blair is Snape, etc. There is no way out from that mental spiral for me so I can't bear to watch.

Last season's casting was generally better, although I will admit I am looking forward to some prime Olivia Williams content - she is always a welcome presence on my glowing rectangles

Diamond jubilee and the start of withdrawal from duties. Lockdown and death of Philip. Platty Joobs and her death.

I'd be amazed if they go that far. If it was me I'd end it with her jumping out of a plane with James Bond.

I'd say you'd probably be right if the whole thing was mapped out in advance but to not include the final 10 years, and since the real world provided an actual conclusion to the series before filming started, it would seem far more sensible to end in 2022.

Morgan has said in the past he doesn't plan to tackle recent years, like the Harry/Meghan stuff, as the story isn't over. Don't know if the queen's death changes anything

Also thought this season was weaker, a lot of boring episodes, though there's been 1-2 episodes each season I haven't really liked. Liked Debicki's Diana though

spoilers* but GHOST DIANA klaxon!!!¡¡¡!!! 📣💥🔊

*(i haven't been watching recent seasons, i gleaned this from twitter)

It seems to have united the critics….

https://i.imgur.com/2GcweDg.jpg

To be fair, her nickname had an obvious homophone. That's some pretty heavy-handed foreshadowing; it bespeaks laziness in the writers' room.

It's pretty poor but not noticeably worse than any of the other series after the first two or three (gut says it's fine through to the 60s but takes a downturn pretty much as soon as the 70s hit).

Then again, it's still country miles better than the Spencer film, and Kristen Stewart got all kinds of awards nominations for that. That also featured royal ghosts lecturing people as a key plot point.

I've already said this, but the name "Fflyn" was new to me. I have been helpfully educated on the linguistic rationale (hat tip to James Redd) but I am still processing that info.