Frost/Nixon (2008)

”Hello, good evening and welcome!”

“I don’t actually say that...”

For all that Ron Howard is an unflashy director his style certainly works, and his work on bringing this excellent Peter Morgan stage play to cinema is the perfect example. Oh, its stage origins are certainly very obvious, but there’s nothing wrong with that. What matters is the extraordinary performances, with Michael Sheen once again perfectly inhabiting a real figure in the form of David Frost as we know he can, but just as much with the equally sublime Frank Langella, who may not look or sound like Nixon but, for the length of the film, simply is him.

The script is of course superb, bizarre though it is to see everyone’s least favourite BBC director general John Birt as a character in a film. The four interviews are treated and shown as though they were rounds in a boxing match; this film is the Rocky of political interviewing, always reminding us of Frost’s apolitical nature and light entertainment background. It makes for gripping viewing, with high stakes for everyone, and the time just flies by while watching. We see Frost genuinely struggle and Nixon’s confession, when it comes, feels both earned and deeply powerful. The film is a triumph.

Perhaps the true centre of the film, though, is Nixon’s drunken phone call to Frost and the huge chip on his shoulder about his class background that is revealed. Nixon was a fascinating man, a character of Shakespearean depths and an ambiguous legacy, certainly tragic, an introvert in an extroverted profession and, beneath it all, a human being. Sheen may be superb in playing the mannerisms of a talented but uncomplicated man, but Langella deserves real credit for conveying such fathomless depths.

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.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 8- Pride & Joy

"The banger is falling apart!"

This episode was, perhaps, inevitable given the way this series is structured; a long and demanding Commonwealth tour between Liz and Phil serves as a nice contrast with her less dutiful sister Margaret, who duly makes a hash of standing in for Elizabeth during her absence. Just as interesting, though, are the deepening cracks appearing between Elizabeth and a husband who sees the farcical side of using pomp and circumstance to hide the fact that the once-mighty British Empire is slowly dying with a whimper.

We also get a nice bit of character development for the Queen Mother, too, as she disappears away to the Highlands to get away from it all, be anonymous and endear herself to us viewers in a way she hasn't so far.

This is, I think, presented as a pivotal moment for Elizabeth as Queen as she literally follows Churchill's advice to "never let the cameras see the real Elizabeth Windsor". Just as symbolic, I think, is how she charmingly intimidates a group of photographers into destroying the evidence of her row with a somewhat mardy Phil. The tour is deeply punishing, as shown by some nice directorial tricks, but Elizabeth endures it all for duty.

The ending, where the Queen bollocks Margaret and they proceed to get philosophical, is perhaps a microcosm of the whole show; it's well-made, well-acted and watchable, but it is lacking in the profundity that would make it truly great, and I suspect that is in no small part down to the subject matter.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 7- Scientia Potentia Est

"No one wants a bluestocking or a college lecturer as Sovereign!"

One of the better episodes, this, making the point that not even all the privilege in the world can save one from 1950s misogyny and stereotyping- and, make no mistake, today is much the same but with the rough edges taken off. Women's rights may have advanced from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic but they are nevertheless in the Stone Age.

Back in little Lillibet's childhood, for example, even after she became heir presumptive, her education consisted solely of the Constitution, Bagehot (So that's how you pronounce the name! I had a similar epiphany with "Lascelles".) and all that. Nothing else. No history, literature, science, philosophy; and yet, her brief expert discourse to the professor hired to tutor her on the finer points of horse racing is clearly meant to imply that Elizabeth, so self-consciously uneducated and intimidated by all these successful and educated men (yes, men) who surround her, is not so much unintelligent as untested.

The other main strand to the episode is, of course, the astounding fact that Churchill had a couple of minor strokes during 1953 and that not only the Press but also the Queen was kept in the dark; no wonder that we Brits have since preferred our leaders to be rather less gerontocratic ever since. Worse, Churchill is only buggering on so that his preferred successor, Eden, can recover from crippling gallstone surgery. And the poor heath of both the prime minister and the foreign secretary is seen, especially by the Eisenhower era Americans, as a metaphor for national decline. Awkward.

We also get a disturbing clash over the choice of his replacement as royal secretary between Elizabeth and the forces of ossified conservatism in the shape of Lascelles; he seems to see anything other than bland, passive conformity as a slippery slope on the way to Abdication. But Elizabeth is clearly no Edward VIII.

We end with Elizabeth giving Churchill a delightful bollocking and Phil, hitherto unseen all episode, turning up as pissed as a fart having spent even more time away from his wife. All is not perfect in that marriage...

Good stuff.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 6: Gelignite

"There's no such thing as a blameless party in a divorce!"

So this is the one where Margaret isn't allowed to marry the man she wants because he's divorced (his wife left him) and, frankly, because he's a commoner. And all because the Queen is allowed, through the Royal Marriages Act 1772, to veto any of her relatives.' marriages before they're 25. It's hardly fair although, of course, the same could be said of hereditary succession. Being in the Royal Family is a (very) gilded cage. To be royal is not to be free. We end with the two sisters very much estranged.

That takes up most of the episode, but we also get some foreshadowing of Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal courtesy of Ed Stoppard, who played Brian Epstein in Cilla; Stalin dying in the background; and Princess Margaret delivering a speech in Rhodesia at the end which is staggering in its casual racism. And it seems that Philip is spending less and less time with Elizabeth.

Dramatic and unusually self-contained as the episode is, it feels very much like foreshadowing...

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 5: Smoke and Mirrors

"Borrow it, Ma'am? From whom? If it's not yours, whose is it?"

And so we come to the coronation, that watershed in British television history where a ceremony both elitist and inclusive (Phil let the TV cameras in) finally made telly a true mass medium. It was also, as we see here, a battle of wills between, inevitably, tradition- the Dukes of Norfolk have arranged all coronations since James II- and the radical modernising zeal of, er, Prince Philip. In 1953 he was very much the outsider, and has the fear of revolution of a continental royal..

It;s nice, then, that we begin with a flashback to 1937, as George VI lets little Lilibet help him with practising for his big day. It's also a brilliant showcase for David as a character- forbidden from the event, he may host a small party in Paris, mocking the ceremony as it is screened, but he is not so cynical as he seems; he is wounded that he never lasted long enough to have a coronation of his own.

This is also the point where Queen Mary dies, a very present link with the Victorian past. The same could be said of Churchill, who now sits during his audiences with the Queen. But the centrepiece is the ceremony itself, much of which is simply shown as was, complete with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Ronald Pickup) fluffing his lines. It's a deeply moving and powerful piece of mumbo-jumbo. But we end with Elizabeth and Philip's marriage in an awkward place.

More very good drama, as we can expect from Netflix. The Crown is, perhaps, in the "very good" caegory rather than being one of the all-time greats, but at the halfway point I'm very much enjoying it.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 4- Act of God

"Be careful out there. It's a real pea-souper!"

This episode is interesting in that it deals with the great smog crisis of 1952, where a mixture of weather and pollution caused 10,000 deaths and the elderly Churchill, interested only in foreign policy, showed no more ntetest until his job was seen to be in peril; this isn't widely know today, much like Churchill's second ministry as a whole.

In other news Phil takes flying lessons with the man who's shagging his sister-in-law- Elizabeth manages to get Churchill to agree to this as a quid pro quo- and Queen Mary is dying. This shouldn't be surprising; after all, she was born in 1867, the year of the Great Reform Act and the Ausgleich, but for Elizabeth it's a race against time to speak as much as she can with the person who seems to have formed her ideological view of monarchy.

We get to know Clem Attlee a little in this episode, no longer prime minister yet, next to Churchill, seeming to be relatively young. And, most heartbreakingly, Venetia develops her hero-worshipping crush on Churchill to a peak, only to be killed by a traffic accident in the smog. So that's why the character has been so heavily emphasised.

Interesting that Elizabeth's view of monarchy is extremely conservative, an updating of the Divine Right of Kings to the context of parliamentary democracy, whereas Philip is much more modern, believing in such radical concepts as the separation of church and state. It's inter sting, too, that the constitutional question of whether she is able to sack Churchill on grounds of age and irrelevanc is never really resolved in theory; even Tommy Lascelles leaves the question open. Only Queen Mary is there to give a firm answer, and she won't be there for long.

More fascinating, cerebral stuff that avoids Daily Mail-style fawning in favour of ideas and characters. This is good telly.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 3- Windsor

"I know he's Winston Churchill and all that, but remember who you are!"

This episode plays a clever trick in constantly juxtaposing Elizabeth's first baby steps as monarch with the abdication, in flashback, and present day waspish emptiness of David, the former Edward VIII, with the now dying Queen Mary standing in judgement over everything. Alex Jennings is perfectly cast.

Elizabeth is now faced with the full weight of being Queen, dealing with her first red box still marked for "the King" and feeling nervous about her first audience with Churchill, who soon puts her right about how such things are done. But she's under pressure to ensure that the kids keep Phil's surname, and to stay in Clarence House rather than Buckingham Palace, both to please Phil and smooth her marriage, and both doomed, as we see.

It's interesting to see the character of Ernst Von Hannover, a reminder of the family's German roots who happily chats in German with Queen Mary. And it's ominous to see that Townsend's wife has left him; the affair between Margaret and himself, in the 1950s, is another thing that can only be doomed.

The unpopular David manages to do a little deal with his old friend Churchill, breaking the bad news about the surname and palace to the Queen in exchange for no cut in his allowance. Phil is not happy, feeling emasculated; these are days long before feminism. But most interesting is the chat between Elizabeth and David. He may have apologised to Albert for denying him an "ordinary" life, but Elizabeth has been denied one too. Although her definition of "ordinary" is not how most of us would use the word.

Good, well-constructed drama, and still gripping.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 2- Hyde Park Corner

"I thought we'd have longer."

This second episode is a superbly crafted piece of drama, significantly better than the last one, entirely concerned with the slow but inexorable demise of George VI, the race to tell Lilibet and Phil- stuck in Kenya many decades before mobile phones- what has happened, and give us our first glimpse of the changes that must happen now that she is Queen Elizabeth II. Earlier this episode Lilibet curtseyed to her grandmother, Queen Mary; now, Mary curtseys to her.

Oh, and I've just realised why I recognise Pip Torrens, who plays Tommy Lascelles; he was Mr Cholmondely-Warner in Harry Enfield and Sons. It was the scene where he speaks sternly to Townsend about what he's up to with Margaret that made me realise. Blimey.

We also get the first of no doubt many scenes of Phil being vaguely racist as the royal couple touch down in Kenya, we get introduced to Churchill's new secretary Venetia, who will no doubt play an important role later on, and we begin to see both how Churchill is slowly losing it (except for big set-piece speeches, of course) and how frustrating this is, despite royal rebukes, for Anthony Eden, perpetual heir to the premiership and the Prince Charles of the 1950s Tory party.

But the episode centres around the urgent yet calm, uneasy yet rehearsed flurry of activity that follows the King's sudden death one morning; we see as the news slowly circulates and plans spring into action. Amongst all that are small character moments, though, with Phil facing down an elephant and Elizabeth showing her war mechanic skills. And there are hats everywhere. Lots of hats.

But there's no denying that this is a very impressive piece of telly. More please.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 1- Wolverton Splash

"I've signed myself away."

"Or won the greatest prize on Earth."

Yes, I know: yet another TV series on the go and so very many plates spinning. I eventually finish them all, you know me! Everything will be followed to its conclusion at some point. Well, perhaps not Detectorists...

Anyway, let's turn to The Crown, a new-ish (I'm slightly behind the curve, as usual) Netflix drama which has gleaned quite a lot of critical acclaim and stars Claire Foy as a young Queen Elizabeth II from the time when a pubescent Paul McCartney used to perv over her and Matt Smith as everybody's favourite casual racist, Phil. Both are rather good. The script takes an interesting tack, though: the era depicted is staid, with rationing, pre-'60s stultifying puritanism and a truly crap popular culture, but the script plays against this. King George VI in his first scene- which shows just how mollycoddled by servants monarchs are,-drops the C bomb quite casually. That's an interesting choice and drops a hint that this programme may be a little interesting to someone like me who isn't exactly an ardent royalist.

(There. I've said it; not really a royalist. That isn't to say that I want a republic right now- I don't think our age has the appropriate regard for constitutional propriety or civil liberties for such major constitutional surgery and I think we should carry on, ideally with some Scandinavian-style reform, with some kind of constitutional monarchy. But if you were making a new country from scratch then of course you'd have some kind of republic and it's silly to pretend otherwise.)

But perhaps the most interesting piece of casting is John Lithgow (the baddie from Santa Claus: The Movie!!!) as Winston Churchill. He's far from obvious until you see his extraordinary performance which strikes that difficult yet perfect balance between impression and performance. Ben Miles is good too as  royal equerry Peter Townsend, so very proper as he secretly shags Princess Margaret.

Anyway, Phil and Lilibet are getting married. It's all very grand, especially for the austere 1947. She says "obey", which raises eyebrows. The Tories "win" the 1951 election, and Churchill gets to recycle his famous line about Attlee and the empty taxi. But this episode is essentially about the warm relationship between Lilibet and Phil, his difficulty- '50s gender roles being what they are- in adjusting from naval life to the life of a royal "wife", and how the  news of the King's cancer is so slowly kept from him but how, in spite of the denial and the stiff upper lips, it's killing him.

This is actually rather good.