The Crown: Season 3, Episode 9- Imbroglio

 "I wasn't supposed to fall in love with you..."

If one is, in time, to become a king, one must first become a pawn. This quietly devastating episode shows one again that to be royal is to spend life in prison- a luxurious prison, yes, but one with little hope of parole.

We begin with David's funeral, which clearly points to where things are going, as Wallis warns Charles never to abanon true love... and that his family cannot be trusted. We have already been made to see parallels between Charles and David, and this is where they play out.

Charles is in love with Camilla. And yet it was all supposed to be a bit of fun, arranged by the Queen Mum and Lord Mountbatten, so he can have a bit of fun and "sow hs oats" while undergoing naval training. Both of them are pawns and even Camilla, who is doing this because she was told to, and supposedly still "obsessed" with Andrew Parker-Bowles, is confused about her feelings. The Queen is not exactly pleased at the actions of her mother and Dickie, but there's only one thing for it- Camilla and Parker-Bowles are to marry. By royal fiat. Just like that. This is life in the British upper echelons, in the 1970s.

What's particularly clever here is how the events of the time are allowed to function as contrast and metaphor. Much of the B plot consists of the mutually stubborn battle over the coal strikes between Ted Heath and Arthur Scargill, both of whom are from very working class backgrounds which have shaped them very differently- we even get a flashback to Heath's childhood. But it's hard not to see the power cuts, the candles and the three day week, explicitlt referred to as heralding a potential collapse of law and order, as a parallel to and metaphor of how things are panning out for Charles. I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with a national crisis being used to illustrate the finer feelings of our betters, but it's all very impressively done. And it's niceto see how seamlessly we've moved to focus on the new generation.

Plus we get to see Princess Anne, ny new favourte character, singing along to David Bowie's "Starman". This is awesome.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 8- Dangling Man

 "One doesn't often get a chance to visit a former king. Former kings are usually dead."

An interesting episode here, one that simultaneously looks back to the legacy of the dying Edward VIII and forward to the expected reign of Charles, not less than fifty years in the future as this episode, alongside the new decade, begins. David will not see much of the 1970s.

It is an easy, yet valid criticism here that David's seemingly treasonous behaviour during the War is downplayed. But one cannot criticise the emotional beats, not the performance of Derek Jacobi which is outstanding as ever, as we chronicle the last couple of years of the self-indulgent old fool.

But David is not so much the focus of the episode as awarning of a possible future for Charles, who shows worrying signs of admiration for his great-uncle as well as similar tendencies to meddle, be opinionated, and fail to see the constitutional necessity of suppressing one's opinions- although we should again note that, should Charles not like the requirements of the job, he can always just not do it.

It's fascinating to see the, er, love square between Charles, Anne, and the recently split Camilla Shand and Andrew Parker-Bowles. Anne is delightful here in her chasing and, well, shagging of Parker-Bowles, wittily wrongfooting him into bed and adopting a traditionally male role in bedding a man she rather fancies. Charles, meanwhile, comes across as rather immature at this date with Camilla, at first appearing rather deep with his discussion of Saul Bellow and his line about the state of Prince of Wales being a "predicament" appearing to quote from Alan Bennett's not-yet-written The Madness of King George... only fr this all to be set up to a silly practical joke, That's clever writing, telling us a lot about the character. Josh O'Connor is excellent, and we are again left nervous about our future king.

Elsewhere, Ted Heath is now PM and he's determined to take us into the Eurpean Economic Community: happier times, times of hope, times when Britain looked outward with ambition rather than inwards with a smirk. Yet then, as now, the heir to the throne is a worry. This s good, thoughtful telly.

The C Word

"I'll tell you what, mate, right. You stand up, and I'll rummage around in your nuts."

Let's get all the superlatives about Sheridan Smith out of the way first, shall we? She's simply awesome, as always. So much so that we shall overlook the lack of any real attempt at a Derby accent. Sheridan Smith is probably the best actress on telly today.

This time she plays Lisa Lynch, real life cancer sufferer and author of the eponymous book. We start off by establishing how nice and normal Lisa is, as we would expect, and then the C bomb is duly dropped. It's an awful moment and, like everything, beautifully scripted and played. All of the big moments- mastectomy, chemotherapy, death sentence- are perfectly judged. And Mrs Llamastrangler and I were glad of this, as the subject of the C word is raw; earlier this year it took Mrs L's uncle, one of the nicest and coolest and most rock 'n' roll guys you could ever meet, get a bit sloshed with or compare beards with. He was only 44. The C word is indeed a C word.

There's an ironic contrast in that Lisa doesn't want to talk about the elephant in the room and can't be surrounded by drama, preferring to talk about other things. Hence the blog. It's all very human and very real.

The blog leads to a book, ironically recommended to Lisa after her second, terminal diagnosis, and the awful heartbreak of the cancer is juxtaposed throughout with humour and humanity. Like life, I suppose.

This is a most affecting piece of television and, what with my having just turned 38 and knocking on the door of middle age, as pleasant a way as any to confront my own mortality. We will all die, and it's usually painful and unpleasant, but at least we have each other, and our pleasures.

Sheridan Smith will win yet another award for this, mark my words. 

New Worlds: Episode 4

"I dream of a vast continent, a republic where millions of men live in liberty."

So, New Worlds is over with a whimper, and I notice that, unlike The Devil's Whore, it caused nary a stir at the time and, mere months later, is pretty much forgotten. So what went wrong? Well, it's dull, for a start, with forgettable characters entirely lacking in charisma. And then there's the didacticism. While there's nothing wrong with looking at the past through the eyes of the present- it only exists in those terms, after all- New Worlds goes too far in putting modern sentiments into Restoration mouths.

The Devil's Whore managed to square this circle, looking at the "Good Old Cause" through the eyes of the contemporary Left examining its own heritage. Yet the characters were all of their time. Here we have Whigs expressing modern values, unhistorical attitudes to the Native American genocide, and crude use of dramatic irony in the many hints that the USA is set to exist in ninety years time. Most notably, the concluding bit of text doesn't even mention the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an elephant in the room that demonstrates a crude attempt to avoid a Whig interpretation of history which values the post-1689 constitutional settlement and trying to put a modern Leftist slant on, well, Whigs.

Charles II continues to be an I characteristically miserable bastard, and then dies right on schedule. Abe Gough is tortured, but escapes execution and buggers off to Boston to embark on a career as the authorial voice. Chris Finch from The Office is still around. There is much examination of the fact that Massachusetts is founded on the genocide of local tribes, and conflict with the King's representative that crudely foreshadows the 1770s ("I am here to remind Massachusetts that it is a colony and not a republic"). Hope is a bit racist. Sidney is horribly executed. Beth's mixed race baby is shunned, and reclaimed by it's fatger's moribund tribe. The Monmouth Rebellion happens. Etc. Etc.

This is actually the best of the four episodes, and moderately involving to watch. But by now it's far too late. 

New Worlds: Episode 2

"I cannot marry a man I do not love."

Sigh. Things aren't really picking up. Ned is leaving Boston for England, and Beth is seeing Abe again. Plots are laid to expose Angelica as a traitor and expose her rather dull and understandably circumspect Catholic husband, who cannot deny the "Popish Plot" for fear of accusations, just so the King can seize her land. This is a pity, as Angelica's home is a haven of Whiggery and religious tolerance. Meanwhile, Beth and Abe hope to go to the New World to carry on the Good Old Cause. None of this is presented so as to be at all interesting.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Hope Russell is to be married to a man- Henry Cresswell- whom she neither loves nor likes. And yes, it's still weird to hear all of these Massachusetts Puritans speaking in RP accents. She is, of course, presented with all sorts if arguments to make her feel guilty and submit to this patriarchal and misigynistic pressure. The point here is that it's not only the Tories back in England who are somewhat lacking in progressivism.

Angelica's house is invaded by thugs who light bonfires and chant about the "Popish Plot and praise the Duke of Monmouth. Angelica's hubby, sure enough, is trapped into denying Titus Oates' outrageous claims and arrested. He is now at the mercy of the infamous Judge Jeffries, and both Angelica and Beth are in trouble by proxy. It's all very dramatic, yet somehow still fails to engage.

Poor hubby is tortured, while Abe learns of his fatger's death; he is, it seems, Wiiliam Goff's son. He tries to kill Charles II, whom Jeremy Northam is portraying as a not-at-all merry monarch. He is harboured by Beth and Angelica, and both are subsequently arrested and, on Angelica's case, finally have her luck run out as she is sentenced to be burned at the stake while Beth is transported to America.

Angelica finally dies, watched by her daughter, and gives a magnificent speech; being executed is, after all, a per formative act and, in this case, a political one as she calls Charles a tyrant. Abe, mercifully, shoots her dead before she can suffer, and then seemingly plunges to his own death.

All this is juxtaposed with Charles, looking thoroughly miserable, putting on his crown and dissolving Parliament. He seems triumphant.

New Worlds: Episode 1

"Young Americans like you must seize true liberty."

The Devil's Whore was superlative television. This... isn't, and it's obvious from the start. The cast doesn't sparkle anywhere near as much, there's a lack of unity between the scenes in England and Massachusetts, and the continuing political themes are handled a little more clunky; yes, pre-Glorious Revolution England was no beacon of liberty, but Charles II was not his father, and certainly not the miserable bastard we see here. There a reason why he's known as the Merry Monarch.

We begin in Massachusetts in 1680, a place of Puritan dogma, ethnic cleansing and republican sympathies which extend to harbouring Colonel William Goff, one of the few surviving regicides. Most jarring of all, though, to modern eyes, is the sight of Native American tribes in that long-settled part of New England; the Eastern Seaboard is the frontier. Here we meet Hope and Ned, two strangely RP-accented Americans about whom we are supposed to care, but don't. Indeed, even watching, as I did, with subtitles, it was well into the second episode before I got a clear idea of who the characters were. Characterisation is not this series' strong point.

Our first sight of England is bodies hanging from the Tower of London; lovely. Here we meet an older and much less charismatic Angelica Fanshawe, her grown-up daughter Beth, and her Roman Catholic husband who has been having rather a rough time of it since the so-called Popish Plot two years ago. Beth becomes curious about her father, Edward Sexby, now a conveniently dead legend for republicans and Whigs. Angelica is under pressure to sell her land to the King. This is all set-up and plot but mainly exposition,  with very little spectacle, character or thematic cleverness. The historical characters- James, Duke of York, the Earl of Shaftesbury and the "Protestant Duke"- are made to seem very dull.

William Goff, meanwhile, is on the run from the King's men. He symbolises the transfer of republican ideas from England to America, something dripping with dramatic irony as we know, as he does not, that the English Civil War will have an  American sequel a century hence in which a new republic will be born. Goff is not an unproblematic proto-American, though; shortly before his death he bemoans the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans, the original sin of the United States. Anyway, he is killed, but not before rather predictably inspiring Ned.

Back in  England, Beth is kidnapped on her birthday by Abe, about whom we are also supposed to care. He awakens both her sexuality and her political conscience somewhat, but nothing really happens. The episode ends with nothing but set-up having happened and no real sense of where the series is going.