“A prison...?"
It's been years since I saw the first season so this is long overdue. In my defence, there's so much telly to see and blog. But I'm reminded, after this first episode of what I can hardly call the new season, that this is a bloody good programme. And both Claire Foy and Matt Smith excel as ever- as does Jeremy Northam as an increasingly tragic Sir Anthony Eden beneath the apparent patrician poise.
Foy is superb at conveying the deep yet necessarily restrained emotions of a Sovereign, not free to be a person, as her marriage seems to be falling apart, yet divorce is not an option and neither, it seems, is happiness. Monarchy is a gilded cage, and not a humane one. Yet Smith also successfully walks a tigtrope, remaining likeable as an emasculated yet childish paragon of toxic masculinity chafing at his traditionally feminine role and, it's implied, having affairs- although this, I suspect, will never be more than implied. I suspect the picture of a woman found by Elizabeth in his bag will have an innocent explanation, but there are definite hints at infidelity. Their marriage is in trouble.
But can royals ever be happy, or human? The institution is cruel. Look at Margaret, now a careless drunk after being denied happiness last season. Royalty means privilege, comfort and no freedom whatsoever. There are plenty of reminders here of the snobbery that surrounds it. Any debate on the monarchy would always be won by republicans as a no-brainer. And yet, what should we have instead? Do we, in populist 2020, trust our venal politicians with any major constitutional reform?
But the Establishment (a very '50s word) goes beyond this. We first see Eden addressing Eton, hia alma mater, as the sixteenth out of forty prime ministers to have been an Old Etonian. It reminds us that even the sensibly, centrist, Welfare State-supporting Tories of the Butskellite decades were still Tories and not, alas, Whigs, accepting change and reform only as far as they needed to survive.
This is a fascinating mix of themes, of the personal and the political, which are of course profoundly intermingled. Again, I'm hooked.
We see the Suez slowly unfolding in Egypt, to the concern of pretty much everyone, and scenes of the Canal being invaded by British and French troops are juxtaposed with Eden popping pills.
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