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

ok i'm going in

i was uneager before what with events but now i'm gung-ho

iirc the Aberfan section is very good but the series is overall pretty meh. I'm not sure about the guy who plays Wilson (some of dialogue with him is good but also mainly terrible) but saying that I've read about 100 pages of the Pimlett biography on him since i watched this and maybe they've done an alright job tbf!

i love Jason Watkins in everything so i was onboard but admittedly i didnt know a ton about Wilson

it opens in sprightly fashion: a flunky realising he has to describe the queen as old to her face (bcz of the new stamp design), helena b-c hilarious as margaret, eiir discussing wilson and communism with anthony blunt (a bit stolen from from a p good play by alan bennett) -- and i'm only 11 mins in

wilson a hard figure to capture and represent i suspect, they just called him "enigmatic", which is correct -- h's become a bit of a strange hole in political histories of the era he dominated (and wrote about, tho i doubt anyone except pimlott ever read what he wrote)

lol at herself sucking up to winnie and he just drops off as she's blathering

"after that it's ma-am -- rhymes with ham"

some of the most contested bad Wilson dialogue from this was him confessing he has Alzheimer's iirc - which wouldn't make sense with the time it was. In his formative years at Oxford he wasn't impressed with poshboy commies like phillip toynbee and initially joined the liberal party (while they were extremely unfashionable and of the verge of extinction) so the bit where it is said the secret services vetted him and he checked out ok would be very true!

iirc he was very aware his mental powers were in decline -- he'd had a formidable memory, and felt it slipping away and decided to quit before it got so bad that it caused him problems

yeah him and his dad both had astonishing powers of memorising and his dad was a human calculator. If he had it at that stage then i'm totally fucked!

it's probably quite a good performance by Watkins tbf

This show drags so much. I’ve been putting it on as background while working and thought I was well into season 2. Nope, episode 7 of season 1.

think the word "mole" is probably more anachronistic than "alzheimer's" actually -- the latter was named as condition in like 1910, though wasn't in wide public usage i think until the mid-80s? (they;d have said "pre-senile dementia" probably)

"mole" went wide in 1974 w/tinker tailor and was presumably a term of art in the secret services before then but the head of mi5 wouldn't just use it unglossed to HMQ in 1965

(i will try and not do this too much, it is a pathology and renders endeavour unwatchable for me)

don't mention moles to HMQ, she'll be getting her gloves on to wring the neck of some poor creature! (obv baseball bat delivered death is purely for commoners)

ok i was getting mildly annoyed at the extensive use e1 had made of a.bennett's "a question of attribution" -- but actually they turned it round nicely and added something (at phil's expense lol)

i like the pace tbh

The theme of the ones I saw in this last series seemed to be how trapped they all were and how we should feel sorry for them (Charles, Phil, Margaret) which was all a bit overdone. Lots of gloomy music as well. Very tedious.

no spoilers

... there's the rub, I have no interest in watching even a millisecond of anything that tries to make you feel sympathy for anyone connected with the Windsors. You will probably not be surprised to learn

ok but cf my reading and counterclaim throughout the thread (viz slapping down tuomas two years ago): it's about eiir's solitude, which/who you only need feel sorry about/for if you feel her decision to accede to the institution is justified or undodgeable (if you think duty is a call that honour can't refuse). i continue to think this is an interesting stipulation for the central character of a modern story, bcz so very unusual and untimely -- and bcz it's classically so clearly the set-up for a tragedy rather than a happy ending, which is (to me) an interesting way to set off into this allegedly pro-monarchy story (as in: anything more hostile or satirical, more superficially anti-monarchy, will be unavoidably much less interesting, not least bcz so much more commonplace as a dramatic choice)

we shall see and i shall say if s3 (as fetter is claiming) swerves wildly in a new direction. as of e1 it very much does not (so philip seems to have become poisonously dislikeable and eiir unfoyishly overeager to slip into fatuous upperclass rumour all round her -- viz that wilson is obviously a communist spy)

Famously EIIR liked Wilson.

she likes him in this show

american stuff honestly continues to be the weakest material (everyone seems to doing bad fake accents)

It's the stuff they choose to leave out that annoys me. Princess Anne is by far the most interesting character but they didn't show her kidnap attempt.

as of e2 it's mostly abt duty vs "let's party and fuck" -- assuming the side currently losing (=duty) will shortly pull something out of its dowdy hat to save the geopolitical day

lol i was wrong and good twist (e2 still): not only is the takeaway that the crown as a institution is fucked up and creates monsters but they actually put more or less these exact words into the mouth of tommy lascelles viz its shrewdest and most pitilessly loyal proponent stroke servant

oof the aberfan ep hit me from a totally unexpectedly angle: i mean i know abt it, i've watched documentaries abt it etc (50th anniversary was 2016). i was 6 when it happened and a schoolchild myself presumably literally at school that day -- in other words in a building of much the same (victorian redbrick) look and in a room of much the same (wooden floors) look and feel (tho infant rather than junior, our junior school was a modern building 10 minutes walk away), and in a rural farming village not a mining village of course.

we didn't get a telly till i was 7 and i don't remember knowing abt it at the time, or at all having to process it as a child (i think i first read abt it and saw pictures in a very up-to-date school historybook when i was abt 12?)

anyway i wasn't expecting to be thinking abt it all from the angle of finding the room they were so familiar and honestly cosy, just before they all die so horribly (i loved my time at that school)

blimey :(

jason watkins can't really do wilson's accent -- which i feel i know better than my mum and dad's, that rolling impish granular grumble (amplified by mike yarwood of course, who actually could do it, even if he was otherwise the least funny man alive)

He's got to be better than John Sessions' attempt in "Made In Dagenham". Sessions, who ended up playing Ted Heath not longer afterwards! I'll bet he was crap at that too.

It makes me feel very old that when I was a kid John "UKIP supporter" Sessions was an up and coming young talent in Porterhouse Blue playing a student!

Turns out he never had much talent after all.

yeah, it seemed pretty evident at the time!

he popped up in a James Bond radio adaptation over Christmas - so much for cancellation culture!

who is the poshest "working class" pol between Heath, Thatcher and Wilson? Thatcher was insulated more successfully from the depression than Wilson was but Wilson still still had posher holidays.

watching marcia williams shouting at him just reminded me that private eye always called him "wislon" after some stupid typo that amused them immensely

ok lol at wilson giving HMQ a masterclass in the political need for fake authenticity and actress olivia c then delivering the character's first ever acted tear -- oc's command of her own tear ducts the deeper and spookier masterclass here, that wobbling little blob of water subtly welling for a literal age on her lower lid

(i mean possibly this is faked in production but i prefer to believe the extremely professional colman said "do you want it nice and normal and quick or just unbelievably super-slow, i can do either?")

We’re up to Aberfan too. Oof. I remember my parents talking about it when I was small - it was only nine years before I was born and I realised it was as close to me as the London bombings were to my son. Feelings on top of feelings. OC’s tear was amazing but HM’s eyes IRL are so very cornflower blue, that scene in particular was a bit wonky for me.

the "royals invent reality TV" ep is p funny -- was alice of battenberg genuinely drifting around like a lazy sit-com plot point?

(not feeling their versions of barbara castle or tony benn)

The stuff with Phil's Mum was really eye opening for me, what a life she had.

likewise! battenberg is just a nasty ugly cake to me!

After Princess Alice left the asylum at long last, she lived a nomadic existence, wandering Europe in disguise and eschewing contact with her family for years. As she traveled through Europe, her daughters married German men enmeshed with the Nazi cause. It wasn’t until 1937 that she resumed contact with her family, and it wasn’t until 1938 that she saw her husband for the first time in six years at the funeral of her daughter Cecilie, who died in a plane crash along with her husband and children.

In 1938, Princess Alice returned to Athens, where she rented a modest two-bedroom apartment and continued her work with the poor and underprivileged. She worked with the Red Cross, organized soup kitchens for starving Athenians, and smuggled medical supplies into Greece from Sweden. In 1943, she sheltered a Jewish widow and her two children, hiding them in her home and pleading not to understand Gestapo questioning on account of her deafness.

She obviously must have been adopted, or perhaps getting institutionalised and living with a disability in much more unenlightened times put her on the path to being a genuine enigma and a confirmed good one in a family of complete fucking arseholes!

I was forced by family to watch an episode in November... the "bust up Chas & Camilla" one. This family is so much on my mind, I had to ask, "They're married now, right?"

The Crown podcast covers s3 w really great insightful interviews w cast & crew - i highly recommend the ep4 interview w Jane Lapotaire, the actress who played Alice: she is equally fascinating & has a v intense connection to Alice

https://thecrowntheofficialpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes

xpost - yep!!

they knew :)

oh sry, i misread your post! oops :D

I still prefer that woman who played QEII in the Rutles film and The Naked Gun

the show def makes the Harry & Megan kerfuffle ~slightly~more interesting to me in the context of duty, etc & how oppressive it is etc - like, fuck yes! run for yr freedom! bc this whole poisonous Deal will fuck you up for life if it hasnt already.

but also if the Queen Mum was still alive she’d have prob popped her clogs over it

the naked gun actress is jeanette charles -- a very routine stand-in on UK TV

she has a good origin story: she "appeared as an actress in repertory theatre in her twenties, but initially had difficulty obtaining Equity membership due to her resemblance to the Queen"

still-alive queen mother is now 120 years old, she shd make a rap record like jean calment did

jeanne calment i mean