The Crown: Season 4, Episode 8- 48:1

 "That was impressively c*nty..."

I must admit that, while this season maintains the high quality we've seen from The Crown since the beginning, and this episode for one is typically excellent although with a few , I'm afraid my interest is waning because of the subject matter. The '50s, '60s and '70s felt like history but this season, gradually focusing into my own remembered lifetime, feels more like tabloid celebrity tittle tattle- Charles and Di and, as here, Fergie and dodgy Andy. As a television drama it's still intelligent and excellent as ever, but the subject matter is grabbing me less.

This episode, however, addresses a serious constitutional question: what if a monarch truly comes to loathe a prime minister, and breaks the habit of a lifetime by subtly allowing this to be known- just this once? The matter is particularly acute as the key to the disagreement is the very clear moral need for sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Thatcher's stubbornness is not shown in a good light here. Still, while far from a Thatcherite myself, I must say that the script sets out to portray her in a bad light, heartless and arrogant. The Queen and Thatcher are paralleled throughout, with the Queen consistently shown in terms of her love of the Commonwealth and that speech in Cape Town on her 21st birthday (a nice touch, and lovely to get another scene with Claire Foy) dedicating herself to altruistic service, whereas Thatcher is made to say that she believes in encouraging people to look after number one, and only then to their neighbour. Still, she's right about the Commonwealth including several dictators with

One could argue that Thatcher is portrayed in a bad light here. One could also reasonably argue that her actual opinions don't seem to be misrepresented from what I know of the woman, and that those opinions were callous and ignorant. However, the episode tries to find a balance in the use of the character of Michael Shea who, having advised the Queen against making her views known, does so on her orders- and ends up as scapegoat having had his honourable behaviour highlighted by the script. This doesn't seem to reflect reality, and seems to be there to provide some sort of moral equivalence, although it's well done. But, while there are plenty of examples of royals being brutally unfair to their employees, in this case it appears to be entirely made up. I don't mind artistic licence, or facts being shaped to fit dramatic needs, provided the underlying truth is portrayed, or an attempt made to do so, and I've defended the programme before on such grounds. That doesn't seem to have happened here, however, which is a shame.

We also have some nice dialogue between the royal siblings on the occasion of Andy's wedding, as Charles arrogantly dismisses his siblings as "fringe" and earns the above splendid quote from Anne. His schadenfreude at his mother is, of course, a delight.

So, a well-structured episode with some nice character stuff, especially between the Queen and Thatcher, whose relationship has pretty much collapsed. But I don't like the use of events that didn't happen to provide balance.