The Crown: Season 2, Episode 7- Matrimonium

"As in art, so, it would appear, in life..."

Again we have a Margaret episode and, again, there is much subtlety and character development. Like ast episode, the plot is simple; Margaret is to marry Tony who, we now see, is sectretly carrying on polyamorous relationships with both sexes and, moreover, is rather more damaged than he might appear. Yet Elizabeth, even after hearing the truth from Tommy Lascelles- again brought out of retirement to do what Michael cannot- is unable, after what happened with Peter Townsend, to say no. And the baby to whom she gives birth here will one day be mixed up with sexual doings that are a thousand times worse.

The episode abounds, as ever, with lovely character moments on which we can dwell as we hope that Margaret won't get hurt. The scene between Margaret and Elizabeth at the end is fascinating- Margaret wants freedom and independence, and is marrying this man as part of that. Yet she, unlike the Queen, enjos the titles and the deference and will never give up those things- a necessary precondition for any royal to break free of their life sentence in a gilded cage.

We get an outburst from Philip, last season a victim of snobbery himself, yet looking down on Tony who, unlike hilself, is not the grandson of a king and a prince in his own right. Fascinatingly, we learn that the womanising Tony is the son of a vaguely neglectful mother who left his commoner father to marry an earl, and his younger half-brother outranks him- until he marries Margaret. Deliciously, we hear this as Tony, along with the Frys with whom he is having a bisexual menage a trois, watches the results of the 1959 election as Supermac crushes all before him in a country that has never had it so good.

It is also jarring to see Macmillan lead the Cabinet in prayer upon hearing of the royal baby. 1959 was a different world, albeit a changing one, more religious than ours on the surface- but perhaps not much deeper than that; and where conservative social mores on the surface are not applied to the discreet elite.

A superb hour of drama, as always.

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 5 (Closer Than Sisters)

"I tried to pray that night. God wouldn't answer- but another did..."

Well, this is unexpected; an episode, told entirely in flashback and with many regular characters absent, filling in the backstory for Vanessa and explaining so many things about her. It's also interesting to get an impression of Mina, who appears in a scene which, I think, takes place during Dracula. Jonathan Harker even gets a mention.

She and Mina were, ahem, "closer than sisters" as children, until Vanessa became possessed by a malevolent entity and betrayed her friend by sleeping with her fiancé on the night before her wedding, as you do. Cue loads of scenes of straitjackets and Victorian mental health treatments.

Things are fleshed out; Mina is a Catholic in an Anglican world, presumably an old recusant rather than Irish, interesting in a Victorian context. Much of the second half of the episode strongly echoes The Exorcist. Except her treatment is horrifying; a shaven head, being shackled and hosed down, even trepanning. Her low point surely comes when her mother dies of shock, seeing her possessed and levitating daughter being raped by some kind of demon. This episode is very, very dark, and Eva Green is very, very good.

We end with her reconciliation with Sir Malcolm and the revelation that, every day, this devout, damned, guilt-ridden Catholic writes a letter to Mina and files it away with the others. She loves her childhood friend very much, "enough to kill" her...