The Crown: Season 2, Episode 1- Misadventure

“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.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 10- Gloriana

"You have more freedom than any consort in history. And you repay it by scowling and sulking like an adolescent."

As ever, the title of the episode is clever. It's interesting to consider it alongside the final scene, with Elizabeth dressed up all regal and told to be Elizabeth Regina, most definitely not Elizabeth Windsor. This is both the theme and the tragedy of both the episode and the series.

Elizabeth Windsor has her interests- keeping her husband happy with the man she loves and maintaining a happy marriage with her increasingly petulant husband (Phil ends the series being increasingly unlikeable, beastly to both Elizabeth and Charles without sufficient motivation). But it's in the interests of Elizabeth Regina to ruin all this in the name of a glorious yet powerless monarchy and an uncaring Church which seems to exist only to cruelly police people's sex lives. What happens to Margaret and Peter is unspeakably cruel and I can see how Margaret sees the chance to renounce her titles as a liberation- the chains may be made of gold but to be royal is to be enslaved, with no agency, privacy, dignity or power.

And it stays with you. In a powerful scene a desperate Elizabeth asks for advice from her uncle David, the only person alive who knows how she feels- and for once he drops the cynical mask and speaks honestly; there is no escape from these conflicts between person and monarch, not even abdication. These are complex, abstract themes, handled well in a strong finale.

There's another strand to the episode, though. The new PM, Sir Anthony Eden, at first seems much younger and more vigorous than his predecessor, but we gradually see the pills he's taking, the pain he's in and, in the final scene, the recreational drugs he's injecting; is he any more fit for the job than his predecessor was? The trippy final scene makes it clear that Suez is coming.  This veteran foreign secretary has been reduced to a drug-addicted shadow of a man just when it's all about to kick off.