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

if it has Dominic West in it I won't be impressed. Even though he wouldn't be playing against type at least - but I absolutely despise him as an actor - I just find him unpleasantly unwatchable and almost completely talentless.

so he’s a bullseye for Chuck then lol

well there is that angle of him playing Charles I guess yeah!

lol what was I thinking of, he's born for the role!

tbh i want another two seasons of josh o'connor shrinking self-disgustedly even further into his own shoulders

his physicality as Charles is so great
like an invisible hand just pushing him down & crushing him at all times

I think they should stick with him he's very good. lol I keep thinking back to that nauseating scene where he + camilla are doing the bear joke and finishing off each others lines - it's horrible but it definitely captures something.

otm

We're on episode 4, and so far I've liked all of the acting and directing. Looks great, which does, yeah, help disguise how on the nose so much of it often is. Like (I'm making this up), the Queen will say out loud "what kind of a monster doesn't love her children equally?" and then cut to Thatcher saying "I don't love my children equally" and then later there will be a scene with the Queen and Prince Philip and Philip will say something like 'it's not a monster who does not love their children equally, it is a monster who even humors the possibility," and the Queen will look shaken and upset, and then back to Thatcher who intones "decisiveness should be one's primary trait, it is a show of strength" and then someone will say "Prime Minister, they are angry in the Falklands," and she will say "So send in the navy!" And someone will say "But Prime Minister, people already hate you, won't this make them hate you more?" And she'll respond "what kind of monster yearns to be loved?" And then they'll cut to a wounded deer limping around and someone will say "what a beautiful tragedy moving in slow motion," and then they'll cut to Diana, with her head bowed, walking slowly against a tide of paparazzi flashing their cameras in her face. And so on.

I think it's partly because, thanks to the actors, this story could probably be told through a series of forlorn faces, but they have to fill the silence some how. The dialogue often ends up ... not bad, but not always necessary, in a banal sort of soap opera way. Which it is, of course, but the technical pedigree is otherwise significantly greater.

Btw, every time I see Diana I think of Anthony Edwards' impression on SNL

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NVi7CZFWNTs/Wsed2ujW9SI/AAAAAAAAMm0/kPqcPAMqBDoWQNPntwn8l-XHPH_da6M1ACLcBGAs/s1600/turning%2Bpoint.JPG

lmao

That...doesn't look promising, sorry.

Have seen the Aus episode now. They didnt even TRY to make it look like australia. The scene where charles and Hawke are standing on what I assume was the portico of the Lodge (the PMs Canberra home) was hilarious: sounds of trilling tropical birds and insects, palm fronds waving, some kind of hilly slopes to a SEA in the background.

Canberra's an inland temperate dry and cold place full of gum trees and a lake.

Shot of brisbane was very clearly somewhere like Barcelona or who the fuck knows. Shot of the sheep station had bizrre looking hills you'd only see in the Americas.

And as sic pointed out above Hawke never said any of those nasty things about dressing up a pig on the 4 Corners interview. And that show is a serious current affairs show - it doesnt have an audience!

It was hilarious. Still enjoyed it though. Roxborough is a tresh.

Canberra's an inland temperate dry and cold place full of gum trees and a lake.

A fake lake!

Thats right! Its only been there since the 30s I think?

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.