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

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.

Seems the spat on the Australia tour in front of the film crew did actually happen

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/it-happens-even-in-royal-marriages-20110927-1kvi8.html

I said this on the Westworld thread already but:

Game of Thrones credit sequence: mechanical mapworld comes into being before your eyes.

Vinyl credit sequence: an LP comes liquidly into being before your eyes.

Westworld credit sequence: various biobots come liquidly into being before your eyes.

The Crown credit sequence: molten metal liquidly becomes a crown before your eyes.

I think we've found the MMteens' dominant visual cliché. It's the new teal & orange.

Oh and btw ilx hath infected my brain so thoroughly that at the beginning of E3 all I could think was YES! THERE ARE, INDEED, MOTHERFUCKING CORGIS.

:D

the Corgis just turned up though. I wanted an origin story

I finished the final ep last night

A+, looking forward to more in the future if it's more of this calibre of storytelling.

The stuff between Lizzy & Margaret in ep10 is so sad & kinda gutwrenching to watch it play out even when you know what's coming. Actress who plays margaret is so good

do they explain the awful hats?

Jared Harris currently brilliant in Certain Women btw

no hat explanation sry morbs

Daredevil has the same opening sequence design too.

matt smith should play frankenstein's monster in something. he looks like frankenstein's monster.

i will get back to this soon. thanks, trump!

apropos of nothing I am really into the Queen + land rover + headscarf + gumboots look, it's a real winner for me

the woman clare foy reminds me of also rocked that look -- well, not the land rover, she had a SHOOTING BRAKE instead

or actually one of those half-timbered morris minor travellers full of smelly king charles spaniels

http://www.classicandsportscar.ltd.uk/images_catalogue/large/morris-minor-traveller_17586.jpg

watched this last weekend (except for episode one which my wife had already watched), certainly addictive. matt smith is great as philip in this, since I only ever think of him as an ancient horrible racist monster. princess margaret is much too pretty in this compared to her real life self.

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.

i hadn’t caught up on s5 & s6 until now

halfway thru s5
there is def something a bit boring about this season i agree

i think staunton is great as the Queen but i am struggling to get with McNulty as Charles, he’s not nearly pompous & insecure enough, too confident

debicki is good as diana but i ageee w comments upthread that its mostly mannerisms & a bit one-note

i really love lesley manville as margaret, and casting Timothy Dalton as Group Captain Wotsisface in s5e4 was such a lovely touch

Mohamed al-Fayed's episode was maybe the best episode of S5, which is kind of indicative of the existential crisis this show had in its last two seasons. the writers' choices of focus were probably for the better, because I'm not sure I enjoyed any episode focused on the Queen in S5 or S6

yeah agree i liked that one a lot
did the thing imo crown does best, weaving two time periods together

idk what it is about s5 but i’m honestly so bored by their dramatization of the diana of it all at this point
like she’d literally tell a teatowel how miserable she is and wants a divorce then next thing moping to her therapist like oh the queens dismissal was “so final”
like omg stfuuuuuup go wear a fucking bikini and be divorced PLEASE

If she hadnt died she'd have broken up with Dodi like a week later whats a bet.

By the time it got to the Wills and Harry stuff I completely lost interest.

lol yeah probably.

i just finished s5, so now i begin the long march thru s6

sidebar: queen now 100% reminding me pf my dear departed nan, who had almost the same hairdo, wore the same wool skirts & cardigans every day of her life, never saw her in a single pair of trousers

did the thing imo crown does best, weaving two time periods together

For me the other thing The Crown does best is telling me things about British history, and specifically the monarchy, that I didn't already know. The only episode in the last two seasons that did that was the one about Mohamed al-Fayed.

tired: queen as a child tricked* into a nazi salute
wired: queen as an old lady tricked into wearing nu-metal shorts

this gives me a handy bar for the remainder of this show to fall below, at last i can start watching s5 & then s6

*it's why she hates her uncle, bcz either it's a public shame (shows her as she isn't) or a public revelation (shows her as she actually is)**
**either way is an unwanted obstacle

yeah the second half of the final season was completely limp and pointless, but I think that may simply be because I remember all of it happening in real time

yeah i think thats true also

ok well into deathmarch to the end of s6

still such a boring slog
after everything they did w the first 4 seasons its like they were just, fuckit we’ve go nothing here’s diana staring up under her fringe for 20 hours

like no history detours really at all except the mohammed fayed ep in s5

the speculative fiction of dodi & diana’s final hours together was a bit much for me, i mean maybe that is what happened idk

i’m only on ep5 cannot even begin to imagine the depths of boredom yet to be excavated here weeeee zzzz

The William & Catherine and William & Harry stuff is yes, even more boring. The Princess Margaret episode was good though.

good to know thx

the speculative fiction of dodi & diana’s final hours together was a bit much for me, i mean maybe that is what happened idk

ya this was bad, also there's an entirely made up plotline about how Kate's mother basically engineered her daughter and William getting together from even before their time at St Andrews. i mean sure, this show is fictionalised, but that whole arc seemed unnecessarily mean-spirited

didn't even distract from how boring the whole season was, it was def a struggle to finish

yeah they really struggle to make the second half of S6 interesting. just little there work with, I suppose. I preferred the Diana episodes even if I knew a lot of the story

this back half feels so speculative as to beggar belief, like beyond fictionalizing and into “we have now decided to just invent new characters we are calling The Royals”

Charles going off into the scottish highlands to wail abt Dianas death seemed insanely fabulist, like ok what are we actually doing here

and ghost Dianas convo w the queen
lmao ok whut

wait this sounds good tho, all historical reconstruction should include ghosts, cf hamlet etc

to affirm my claim i found a fine portrait of the real actual historical hamlet aka "amblett"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Amblett_Hamlet.jpg/800px-Amblett_Hamlet.jpg

FWIW the ghosts didn't bother me nearly as much as the boring shit

true, the boring shit is definitely the worst aspect

fiiiiiinallly finished this trudge through the treacle of s6

high point: really liked the episode about Margaret, thought it showed their relationship as sisters quite nicely. i didn’t know she had burned her feet, v awful

i liked all the scenes btw William & the Queen, they have good chemistry in their scenes together

camilla puffing on a cig while tending to the tomato plants was v good

harry’s nazi uniform moment lol ugh

the rest of it was decidedly boring/mid and i am glad its over

should have stopped at s4 tbh

OH and the penitence prayer scene for Chuck & Camilla was pretty great imo