The Room in the Tower

 "I've given you the room in the tower..."

It's that time of year, and so we have the latest of the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas helmed, as ever, by Mark Gatiss and on iPlayer right now along with all of its modern predecessors. It's really rather good, an adaptation of a short story by E.F. Benson. I'm in two minds, though- it's good to see adaptations of other writers, but I sort of pine for that M.R. James feel.

This is typical Gatiss Christmas fare, I suppose, which is no bad thing. Despite the ending, which is thoroughly earned, it's a slow, atmospheric tale in which the feeling of dread is slowly and masterfully managed by both script and visuals. The pacing is slow and old-fashioned, which some will not like. I very much do; the slow pace is precisely the point with a ghost story like this, all about mood.

Tobias Menzies does a good job as the protagonist, but it's incredible how subtly terrifying Joanna Lumley manages to be with what really isn't very much screen time. She really steals the show. The framing device with the air raid works well, too, and helps the ending to hit hard. This is, I think, one of the better Ghost Stories of recent years.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 10- War

 "There is no dignity in the wilderness..."

And so the season ends, with two parallel plots- the downfall of Thatcher and the collapsing marriage, that cannot be allowed to fail, of Charles and Di. There is, I suppose, a kind of thematic link that we're encouraged to find, in that both Thatcher and Diana find themselves manipulated by men in grey suits- but the script's attempt to find a parallel seems tenuous and awkward.

So the events of Thatcher's downfall pretty much echo the well-known events of reality, with highlights of Sir Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech word for word (he, a senior Tory, expresses deep regret at the deep damage done to the national interest by fatuous loose-lipped Europhobes- imagine!) and Thatcher foolishly meeting her Cabinet one by one rather than the probably safer option of doing so in a group. But the scenes between Thatcher and the Queen resonate, as the Queen wisely refuses a dissolution of Parliament and as she awards the greengrocer's daughter the Order of Merit while trying desperately to find common ground.

The scenes between Charles- shown here as a total dick- and Diana- shown here as lovely, hugging a young lad with AIDS in an act which helps dissolve stigmas and make the world a better place- don't actually add much. We know the Royal Family wants them trapped in that marriage and sod their happiness if they want to "let the side down". We know also that their unhappiness is in a context of extreme privilege, albeit a privilege entirely without freedom. What's a little newer is Camilla's understanding that she and Charles cannot be together without her being humilated and cast as the villain.

I suspect this season has been just as good as its predecessors, and certainly so more prone to fictionalise history whatever certain commentators may say, but this Charles and Di stuff I find tiresome subject matter, bordering on the tabloidy- and we're getting well into living memory for me. I'm not finding The Crown in the 80s and 90s as fascinating as the 50s and 60s. I may or not watch and blog the next season. We shall see.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 9- Avalanche

 "Most marriages survive because most people aren't fantasists."

Meh. I'll admit that this episode is as well-written and well-made as ever, but I'm just not invested in the Wales' marital problems, which I recall as tabloid tittle-tattle. Yes, Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin are superb. Yes, we have an interesting love triangle with Camilla as a nicely nuanced third side, although James Hewitt is not sufficiently developed to make a true love rectangle. It's interesting to see the problem in the marriage is not so much the age difference but the fact that he's an introvert and she's one of those curious extrovert people, more interested in musicals and chart pop than in books and ideas.

There's a real savng grace in Anne though, who is fast becoming a favourite character of mine, the Princess Margaret of her generation and delightfully witty and wise in her balanced and human cynicism. The two highlights here both consist of Anne delivering some home truths- first when she pithily tells the Queen the brutal truth about the Wales' marriage and secondly when she tells Charles, equally pithily, to stop with the self-pity and get on with it. As the Queen says, the marriage of the heit to the throne "simply cannot be allowed to fail". Charles may be a self-pitying spoiled brat, but no one should ever be trapped in a loveless marriage.

Sigh. This is good stuff, I know. Charles in particular is a fascinating, nuanced character. I cant say this isn't very good indeed. But The Crown, over this season, seems to have developed into something that's, well, not my thing. I'll see how the finale goes, but may possibly give the next series a miss.

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.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 7- The Hereditary Principle

 "Idiocy and imbecility..."

Another strong episode here, and the first Margaret episode for ages (will there be many more?) as she hits her mid-life crisis with the realisation that her life has been unhappy and there isn't much time left to put things right, certainly not if the lung operation she's just had is an indicator.

There is, of course, a wider theme here of mental health and stigma, as Margaret discovers a family secret in the treatment of some insttutionalised members of the Queen Mum's family- and the first scenes of Katherine and Nerissa give us some juxtapositions characteristic of The Crown as they watch the Royal Variety Performance on telly (is this the one where Tommy Cooper died?) in their institution, and Katherine's birthday is contrasted with that of Prince Edward.

We hear the reasoning, and the voice of a royal generation, from the Queen Mum; when the Abdication propelled the Bowes-Lyons from minor Scottish aristocrats to toyalty by marriage, those within the family seen as suggesting a bloodline that as not "pure" needed to be hidden away. It was, as Margaret says, cruel, inhuman and reprehensible. Genetically, it seems, the royal family cannot have inherited the gene- but that has no bearing on the matter. If the hereditary principle depends on this sort of thing, the hereditary principle must go.

But the episode is also about Margaret, doomed to a life of heartache, emptiness and self-conscious usefulness, where potential lovers turn out to be "friends of Dorothy" and she feels threatened by Diana. I'm not sure she needs the Queen to give her purpose- she's rich and famous; there are plenty of things she could do to make the world a better place. But she is a paradox- a terrible snob who rails against her position as a "spare" whose proximity to the crown grows further apart with each royal birth and, as Gore Vidal said, far too intelligent for her station. And yet, especially as played by Helena Bonham Carter, she's a perversely likeable bitch. 

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 6- Terra Nullius

 “Some countries are too important to send out the understudy...”

This is another clever episode, examining the serious fault lines in Charles and Di’s marriage, and making it clear how appallingly Diana was treated, against a series of breathtaking Australian locations. Yet it’s also the episode that makes it clear, I think, that while we can’t assume Peter Morgan is a republican it’s clear he is unsentimental about that peculiar institution. 

The press are, as I write, full of royalists moaning about The Crown making bits up, and this is an episode where such concerns will loom large.  I’ve addressed this before so let me simply make the point that this is drama, not documentary. That it is fictionalised is implicit in the format, and that should be obvious.

That facts, and memory, are unreliable is even lampshades early on as Elizabeth and Philip describe their 1954 tour of Australia in very different terms to what we saw on screen two seasons ago, claiming that it brought them together. But memory is not all that separates the generations. Elizabeth and Philip thought nothing of leaving their children in the UK for four months; Diana has quite sanely insisted on taking baby William. Yet she’s still expected to leave him alone for two weeks at the start of the tour, something that only she seems to realise would be utterly insane.

And that’s the thing; the royals are not just “tough”, as the Queen mentions at the family conference at the end just after her shocking failure to provide any support or understanding to a desperate Diana: they are a symptom of an elite culture that raises children to be emotionally stunted, damaged individuals. 

Charles, on one level, is the villain here- he shows no chemistry or real affection for his wife, yet he rings Camilla every day. Yet he himself is a victim of his upbringing, and did not meaningfully consent to the marriage any more than Diana.

We are left to ruminate on the irony of man-child Charles and arch-republican Bob Hawke connecting over the fact that both of them, for very different reasons, have their purposes thwarted by Diana. Yet all three of them can be seen as victims of what is, I think, very much presented as a toxic institution.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 5- Fagan

 "The State has gone. She's dismantled it."

Again this season we have an episode that looks like a decent idea on paper but ends up not quite working. The royals take a bit of a back seat here as we look thematically about their contacts with, and inevitably perverted view of, the general public; that episode with Lord Altrincham gets a mention, and we see one of those garden party things, which looks horribly constipated.

But most of the episode focuses on Michael Fagan- unemployed, in a Kafkaesque web of benefits, denied visiting rights with his kids, abandoned in Thatcher's Britain to a life of dingy tower blocks and an actually rather cool "alternative '80s" soundtrack. It doesn't really matter that more is made of his conversation with the Queen after breaking in than real life warrants; it just doesn't really work.

We're supposed to see two opposing sets of values- the slow dismantling of social solidarity by Thatcher, whose chats with the splendidly Butskellite Queen are almost ideological. Yet Fagan's misery is contrasted with the jingoism of the Falklands victory, with its street parties and victory parades- and the opposition doesn't really work. One can be a sensibly Keynsian non-Monetarist who cares about social solidarity and believes in economic policies that lower unemployment while simultaneously believing that British citizens on faraay islands are entitled not to be conquered by fascist dictators. Even Michael Foot supported the Falklands War. The implied contrast here just doesn't work.

There's some good stuff here- it's clear that the Queen and Philip don't see eye to eye over Thatcher, and Gillian Anderson is perfect. But this episode, overall, is a bit of a dud.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 4- Favourites

 "Our children are lost..."

Hmm. There’s a lot to admire about this episode and much that is interesting- not least our first glimpses of how they’re going with the characterisation Princes Andrew and Edward. But I think, structurally and thematically, it’s a bit of a misfire and doesn’t really work overall, despite some impressive character scenes.

This series is, of course, drama and not documentary, and therefore entitled to balance factual accuracy with dramatic licence, as we’ve often discussed. It’s not unusual, in The Crown, for the chronology of events to be altered a bit so that events coincide where this was not the case in reality, generally as a way of making a character point. This is generally fine. But, in this episode, it’s so obviously done that you can see the joins.

There are three separate threads to this episode- the Queen realising she doesn’t know her four children as well as she probably should; the useless Mark Thatcher getting lost in the Sahara; and the early stages of the Falklands crisis.

Still, the relationship between Elizabeth and Philip is dealt with well, as is the weirdness of Charles, his self-centredness and Diana’s very worrying depression. There’s also Anne’s unhappy marriage and jealousy of Diana’s popularity, and we learn that Edward is an arrogant, entitled git and Andrew a charming pervert, at least the versions we see here.

Most interestingly, though, we see how blatantly Thatcher favouritises her son over her daughter out of probable preference fir the opposite sex, essentially because she worshipped her father and had issues with her mother. This is fascinating.

And yet, good though the character development is here, the structure is just too artificial to hang together. It’s a good execution of a flawed concept.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 3- Fairytale

 "Whatever love means..."

I need to be careful with this episode. One of the side effects of watching and blogging a Netflix series that is actually current is that one cannot avoid comment on The Crown in the media. Because, I suspect, the fourth season is moving closer to the present, there's a lot more uproar over the fact that the series can be quite damning in its portrayal of (mostly) living royals, and we should remember that this is not documentary but fiction, based on fact but with much artistic licence. We should remember this.

However, Peter Morgan has been quoted as saying words to the effect that, while individual scenes may be fictionalised, the overall effect is "true".

Well... if what this episode shows us about the treatment of Diana is "true" on either level- if- we should set up an, er, new New Model Army, wage war against the Royalists and raise the standard of Parliament. Perhaps Marcus Rashford would make a good Lord Protector of a Second British Commonwealth? 

 This is all, quite rightly, shown from Diana's perspective, as she's forced to live in Buck House while Charles buggers off on a long jaunt. A teenager, a child, an innocent virgin (the royals seemed to insist on that) for sacrifice, whose youth and innocence is nicely shown through snippets of early '80s hits and that nicely conceived cene where she roller skates through those long, wide Buck House corridors with her Walkman, just to remind us that this is 1981 and apparently not some awful feudal past. The bulimia is hardly surprising.

Worse, the pressure of a nation, and beyond, reaches fever pitch. The only person she's able to meet is the worst person possible, Camilla Parker Bowles, in a scene that makes clear that "Gladys" knows "Fred" intimately well and she knows her future husband hardly at all. A sacrificial virgin, indeed.

Her attempts to back out are futile. She has been captured, and the helpless virgin will be sacrificed. Even after she sees that Charles is still seeing Camilla there is no way out.

And she's bored. Alone. Incommunicado with royals out of reach and Bagpuss her only comfort, given lessons in royal flummery by her bitch of a grandmother. Bullied and humiliated as she enters the presence of the royals, embarrassed and degraded as she deperately tried to curtsey to the right arrogant, entitled bastards in the right order. It's enough to awaken anyone's inner Robespierre.

Charles himself does not look at all good here. Yet he himself is unhappy, and himself has no real agency, trapped by what he is into an unwanted marriage to an unworldly child. The Queen's words to him near the end are horrible, about how her grandmother Queen Mary was unable to marry the charming Prince Albert Victor (he of the Ripper rumours, incidentally) after his sudden death, and was then forced to marry his younger brother, the notoriously charmless George V, and endure forty-two years of unhappiness. Christ.

This is gripping, superb telly, and Emma Corrin is extraordinary. It's also utterly horrifying. I've said before that, although I'm a republican in principle, I balk at the practicalities of actually doing it. In 1981, I would have said sod the practicalities. If this is anything like how the monarchy actually was in 1981, its continued existence would not have been acceptable.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 2- The Balmoral Test

 "Well, I think we failed that test..."

That was a fascinating episode, and my fears about potential cosiness from the last instalment are starting to seem unfounded. The metaphor here with the stag- it innocently wanders across a stream into the land of the Royals, is stalked and ultimately shot- is not exactly subtle, but it's clever how the metaphor can be taken in different ways for Diana- enticed into their clutches and captured, and Thatcher- humiliated, and hurries off to symbolically shoot her Cabinet.

Thatcher and Denis are roundly humiliated at Balmoral, with the royals in genetal- Margaret especially- being inconsiderate and rude. Yet there's nuance to their snobbery. Thatcher is unable to relax, have fun, or do anything but work. She's stuffy, resentful, over-serious. One suspects that, tests or not, someone like Harold Wilson, who was most certainly non-U, would have charmed the lot of them. Yes, the snobbery is real, and the way this episode depicts the Thatchers' treatment (the accuracy of this is much-disputed, I believe, but this is television drama, not documentary) is both uncomfortable and hilarious to watch. But it's more complicated than that. 

More broadly, we see clearly how the very non-U Thatcher resents the aristocratic "wets" in her Cabinet, but she isn't necessarily in the right here. The "wets" stand for a time when Conservatives were actually conservative, and more concerned with running things than breaking them. I'm on the Queen's side during their spiky meeting towards the end. But one has to admire the way the script avoids didacticism.

Diana is young, innocent, only eighteen to Charles' thirty-three. Christ. And she's being manipulated throughout, very uncomfortably, into an arranged marriage in which she imagines she could ever be happy. She may pass the "test" with flying colours, being both U and fun-loving, but she's prey. Even Camilla is in on the whole thing. Philip, and pretty much the whole firm, are keen to rush Charles into a marriage he isn't sure he wants with a girl he hardly knows. The scene towards the end, as Diana gets papped for the first time, makes us shudder at where the next seventeen years are leading.

The Crown: Season 4, Episode 1- Gold Stick

 "Two women running the show...?"

This is a real first- I'm blogging the first episode of a season on Netflix on the very day of it's release. That won't last, of course; I'll soon be back behind the curve, as usual.

This is a sumptouosly shot, perfectly well-executed season opener that introduces a new status quo (and new primer minister, a new love interest for Charles, a shocking (unless you're spoled by general knowledge) murder, and that does all the nuts and bolts of storytelling very well. It's very clever narratively, as The Crown always is.This is a splendid piece of telly. It's just that, the odd scene aside, this episode hasn't quite caught fire. It's very good, not great. But these are early days.

The opening scenes are our first bit of cleverness, with visuals of royal pomp and ceremony being overlaid with the voice of an IRA spokesman threatening destrucion to the British Crown- and, of course, foreshadowing Dickie's murder, alongside two young lads. For maximum drama, he does so shortly after an unusually harsh conversation with Charles, who is still having an adulterous affair with Camilla, and for good meaaure leaves Charles a parting letter expressing his disappointment with the now thirtysomething prince, whose amorous pleasure-seeking evokes Edward VIII- a comparison which we keep seeing in The Crown; are we perhaps to see a long arc where he begins to change his ways? And Dickie's death leads to an extraordinary scene, the finest in the episode as well as a superb performance from Tobias Menzies, where Philip expresses resentment at Dickie- his own father figure- transferring his fatherly affections to Charles, who already has a father. This is good stuff.

There's also Thatcher, and Gillian Anderson impresses as the tone deaf and arrogant premier, whose personal awkwardness with the Queen is awkwardly done. I love the concept of Elizabeth's Cabinet guessing game, but Thatcher famously had no real sense of fun. And her comment that "I have found women in general tend not to be suited to high office" in as extraordinary as Philip's snobbery not only about her grocer's daughter origins but about her being a chemistry graduate.

And, of course, there's Diana. Interesting, both we and Charles are first introduced to her as a playfully innocent faerie-type figure. That's an interesting choice. But she seems very innocent, and she's still a teenager, which is a bit icky.

I suppose the episode has a lot to do, and there are certainly excellent parts within it. But there's a certain complacent cosiness of style here too. Let's hope that isn't here to stay.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 10- Cri de Coeur

 "War is our love..."

It's an interesting choice to end the season on such a downbeat note. This is a Margaret episode and a desperately unhappy one, yes, in which she makes a thankfully unsuccessful suicide attempt, yes, but everything seems to be falling apart. The country seems to be at rock bottom, leading the Queen to question exactly what it is she's supposed to have achieved as she faces her Silver Jubilee. It appears, perhaps, as though there's no future, and England's dreaming.

With a bit of sleight of hand this episode covers three and a bit years, from Harold Wilson becoming PM again in the wake of the February 1974 election to the Jubilee itself. There's a lovely little valedictory scene as Wilson resigns, calmly teling the Queen of his Alzheimers diagnosis which, after sixty years of public duty, it now poised to rob him of his retirement like the bastard it is. It's lovely to see how close they've become over the years, in that very British way, with him confessing he's always seen her as a "leftie at heart" and her accepting an invitation to dine at Downing Street, an honour only previously given to Churchill.

But, for Margaret, there is true despair. Her marriage is failing, but worse than that. Tony is humiliating her, again and again, with affair after affair while simultaneously managing to charm everyone- the Queen Mum, Philip, even the Queen who shows him obvious affection- into forgiving his little dalliances. Yet when Margaret has her own little fling with an obliging toy boy she faces tabloid humiliation and appalling double standards as her own affair- just the one, after years of being cuckqueaned- faces consequences very different from those faced by her husband. At least Tony is now faced with having to potentially marry his latest fling.

It’s a fascinating way to end a superb season. Roll on Season Four in a couple of days...

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 Crown: Season 3, Episode 7- Moondust

 "Do I need to show symptoms of despair? Should I sigh and moan dramatically?"

The Crown doesn't do bad, of even average episodes: this is a rather well-crafted (and, I admit, performed) character piece for Prince Philip as the Moon landing- the most sublime human achievement ever- acts as the catalyst for a full examination of his mid-life crisis, which everything in this episode points towards.

And yet, while admiring this, I'll admit I find the episode difficult to love. Perhaps its the strong Christian context for Philip's existential angst; he eloquently describes at the end, during his rather effective concluding soloiloquy, how terrible a thing it can be to have faith in God, and lose it. I sympathise and respect that- this atheist is no Richard Dawkins- but, for those of us who were brought up without religion, and have never had any faith to lose, it's all rather abstract. 

Similarly, I'm forty-three but, while I'll not deny life can be stressful working full time while looking after a five year old and caring for a chronically ill wife, there's no mid-life crisis in sight for me. I'll never walk on the moon, but I've worked hard to look after my family. That doesn't make me unusual, but it does mean that, while my achieements are ordinary, I feel unsatisfied with my life so far. It's tempting to see the mid-life ennui of a pampered royal (there's no evidence, of course, that Philip had any such thing) as a decadent indulgence. But, of course, mental health issues can affect anyone, and being privileged does not mean one does not suffer.

But it is, I think, at the end that we reach the underlying point. Philip has just lost his mother, a woman whose faith never wavers. He's an orphan. And that is not a pleasant thought to dwell on for a middle-aged man with parents in their seventies.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 6- Tywysog Cymru

 "Fancy being the heir?"

"Not if it means going to Wales..."

This is yet another outstanding episode, our first to focus on Charles as a young man rather than a child- Josh O'Connor plays him with aplomb, safely negotiating a path between acting and impersonation. But the script (with James Graham co-writing) is magnificent.

It's horrifying to see Charles at 20, clearly having been denied much of a childhood, being denied a youth too. It's awful so see him trying to reach out to a room of fellow students in Aberystwyth but have the door slammed on him by youths with hair and clothes appropriate for students in 1969, while he stands there in his ever-present suit. He can never belong, and even his family (though his rapport with Anne is lovely) are very cold fishes, as we shall see.

For much of the episode it seems as though the theme is going to be Welsh nationalism, Certainly we, through Charles, learn much of the Welsh viewpoint and it's interesting to see Charles relationship evolve with his republican, nationalist tutor Edward Millward (not a very Welsh name!) from insulting ignorance to true mutual respect as he slips some sympathetic sentiments into his speech which, well, may not have actually been said in his real investiture as Prince of Wales, but are a nice bit of artistic licence.

But all this is undermined at the end, after the warm parting with Millward and his "You did well". The Queen finally receives a translation of the speech and immediately sees through it... his sentiment about Wales being ignored, not listened to, are all about himself. He's exploited the Welsh no less than many of his forebears. And we end with an argument about how a monarch can never be seen to express an opinion lest the whole edifice collapse. At the same time, this is an impossible thing to expect of someone. I 'm sure this theme will recur.

The solution, of course, if one is not a republican (and I, remember, am St Augustine's republican- "Lord, grant me a republic, but not yet"), is that it's only right to allow senior royals to decline the succession and retire into private life if they find this an overly onerous requirement. The gilded cage of royalty must carry the hope of parole. The lack of this sensible reform will, I suspect, lead to much further angst in future episodes...

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 5- Coup

 "I am protecting the Prime Minister. I am protecting the Constitution. I am protecting Democracy."

We have another fine episode here, again mixing excellent character stuff with thought-provoking constitutional issues. I suspect, due to the largely political subject matter, this episode won't be quite as popular as others this season, but to devote space to the supposed coup against Wilson is probably the right thing to do.

It is, of course, not necessarily a hard fact that any such coup was planned, despite decades of rumours. Sources (Hugh Cudlipp, the highly questionable Peter Wright) give some indication that Lord Mountbatten was approached, but it's not widely believed that things went any further. Dramatic licence aside, however, the events are well dramatised here, with Mountbatten's presentation to Cecil King and co on the practicalities of a coup are like something out of a Frederick Forsyth novel. Charles Dance, recast as a necessarily harder-edged Mountbatten, is outstanding as the charismatic old military leader looking for purpose in retirement. His speech to the Burma veterans, including the full recital of Kipling's "Road to Mandalay", is dripping with charisma. Mountbatten comes across as complex here, and not unsympathetic, quite an achievement,

Cecil King is odd, though. Proprietor of the Daily Mirror, friend of Hugh Cudlipp, yet fomenting a right-wing coup against a fairly standard Labour government?

Regardless, the Queen gives all this short shrift here. If she did, in reality, do this, she deserves much praise for doing the most important job of a modern constitutional monarch in defending democracy, for being Juan Carlos in 1981 rather than Vittorio Emmanuele in 1922. Interestingly, this episode contrasts this by showing the Queen spending weeks on end travelling to pursue her horse racing hobby, at the expense of her job. One can hardly begrudge her a holiday, however; Trump and his golf this ain't. And there's a superbly written moment between her and old friend Porchey as she discusses how she would have much preferred the life of a racing horse owner to that of a monarch. These few weeks are a poignant glimpse into the life she could have had, if her Uncle David hadn't forced her, and her reluctant monarch, into the life she now leads.

We end on a note of hope, as the duly chastened Mountbatten reconnects with his sister Princess Alice, reminding us of the complexities of the family trees of the royal houses of Europe. "We Battenbergs have no country" says the old and relaxed Alice to her patriotic brother, both scions of a universal monarchical class floating over the various nations of Europe which at some point borrowed some German princeling to be their king.

We alo have a nice scene with Elizabeth and Philip at the end. The personal stuff, the characterisation, is always perfectly written and performed, and seems to mesh seamlessly with the more phiosophical stuff. This is bloody good telly.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 4- Bubbikins

 "Bubbikins...?"

 This is, again, a cleverly constructed episode, dealing with two seemingly separate- and thematically contrasting- threads, and drawing them together very neatly at the end. It's also the episode where Princess Anne appears for the first time as a more-or-less adult, and where I perhaps begin to warm a little to Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip. He's no Matt Smith though.

On the one hand, Prince Philip is whingeing about real terms cuts to the Civil List. He, husband to the richest woman in the world, may be forced to sell a palace or two or even give up polo. This is contrasted with his mother, Princess Alice, a humble nun in Athens, casually selling her priceless jewellery so she can continue her charity work. These themes interwtwine throughout. Philip tries to savage his public relations faux pas with a documentary on the royals so we can see how they're good value for money, and it goes so badly that the Queen orders it buried after a single broadcast. Meanwhile, the fascist coup of the colonels in Greece exiles Princess Alice to London... and Philip just avoids his mother, as an embarrassment and, worse, a mother who abandoned him.

The threads are drawn together where it is the publicity from Princess Alice, and her hard life of suffering and service, that gives the royals some positive publicity- and leads Philip finally to reconnect with his mother before it is too late.

Most importantly, perhaps, we are shown that Philip's mother didn't abandon him out of callousness, but of genuine and serious mental health issues, for which she suffered barbaric tortures and, just as bad, Freudian psychiatry. Mental health is an issue that can affect us all, eincluding royalty.

This doesn't, of course, stand comparison with its exceptional predecessor, but shows nevertheless the high watermark of this series. Good stuff.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 2- Margaretology

 "There was a young lady from Dallas, who used a dynamite stick as a phallus. They found her vagina in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."

It’s surprising, I suppose, that The Crown has focused so relatively heavily on Margaret. And yet it can’t be denied that they keep finding new and interesting angles to take on Bertie’s second born. This episode manages to be fascinating as a study not only of Margaret but of the contrast and rivalry between the two sisters.

Importantly, the episode begins and ends with a coda, a flashback in 1943, where Tommy Lascelles starts to prepare young Elizabeth for a role for which the more outgoing Margaret would seem to be more suited. Yet Elizabeth is very firmly told, in spite of the fact that both sisters are happy for Margaret to be queen, that that’s not how it works.

In the present day, we are introduced to a fun little turn from an excellent Clancy Brown, who may not resemble LBJ but manages to be damned convincing as the old Texan arm-twister. And the whole episode centres on the UK being in the desperate position of needing an economic ball out from the USA-but we are not LBJ’s favourite country because Wilson won’t touch Vietnam, quite rightly, with a bargepole.

Enter Margaret, to save the day with charm, emotional intelligence, bawdiness and limericks. Helena Bonham Carter is superb here, as Margaret achieves things the Queen could never achieve, in an episode constantly seething with sibling rivalry.

We also see the cracks in Margaret’s marriage getting deeper, and Elizabeth getting fonder of Wilson. But it all ends, nicely, with Philip channelling a theory of Lascelles from when they got drunk together last season- there are the dull Windsor’s and the dazzling ones, and they always come in pairs. For every Bertie there’s a David, for every Elizabeth, a Margaret.

It’s a masterfully crafted and paced piece of telly. I’m not sure it’s particularly deep but the craftsmanship is superb.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 1- Olding

 “What you see is what you get..."

A new season and... well, let’s face the elephant in the room, a new cast. I like the opening, introducing us to Olivia Colman’s new Queen and I must admit, although Claire Foy was magnificent, that she’s won me over. Helena Bonham Carter is superb as Margaret, of course. But Tobias Menzies, as a suddenly charisma-free Prince Philip, is certainly no Matt Smith, and on the face of this episode the character is set to become a lot less nuanced.

Fortunately we have a nicely nuanced performance from Jason Watkins as the deceptively straightforward Harold Wilson, alongside a superb turn from Samuel West as the vile traitor Anthony Blunt. And through the episode runs a lice line of misdirection. It’s out with the old, as the Tories are out and Elizabeth faces the first Labour Government of her reign just as the much-missed Winston Churchill (still the wonderful John Lithgow) is dying... and we hear constant rumours that Wilson is a Soviet spy until we discover the true culprit, who ends the episode threatening to blackmail Philip. I loved the Queen’s double-edged speech with Blunt, who seems to go unpunished.

And yet... this episode doesn’t have the depths of earlier seasons, in spite of its clever conceit. Perhaps it’s just the need to introduce a new status quo and a new cast. I hope so. Let’s hope that turns out to be the case.