The Crown Season 4
Upon hearing that South Australia would be heading into (what was then though to be a six day lockdown), the most reassuring thought I had was that being forced to stay at home would give me the opportunity to binge the newly released season four of the Netflix prestige drama The Crown.
I have blogged about the show before, about the way in which it so elegantly and at times poignantly tells the story of Britain’s second half of the 21st century through an almost minute focus on its sovereign for almost all of that time, Queen Elizabeth II and her family. The show, while set against a backdrop of dynamic world and domestic events, is intensely personal: we see the Falkland’s war through the personal anguish of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s missing son, or the disgust the Queen feels upon realising she (well, it wasn’t really her given all the nannies) raised four fairly unlikeable and even immoral children.
Season four has captured headlines even more ferociously than those before it for two principal reasons: Thatcher and Diana. The show has arrived in the 1980s, when, on one hand, Margaret Thatcher was the Conservative Prime Minister, brining her unique style and certainly controversial economic and fiscal philosophy to Downing Street. On the other, the British and eventually international press was absolutely ensorcelled with the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles’ search for a bride and therefore future Queen of England.
As depicted in the show, Charles eventually settles on Diana Spencer, mainly for practical reasons. She is of appropriate class and connections, looks a beauty, crucially (ridiculously of course), she is a virgin, and she is perceived to be so young and naive as to be easily ‘handled’ by royal staff. Of course, history tells us the royals were wrong in thinking Diana was compliant, and the show does an excellent job of depicting her misery and loneliness, and her subsequent turn to the press and outside attention, done to fill a void borne of emotionless relationships with even her new husband.
The show ultimately shows the inhumanity of royal life. While undoubtedly privileged, almost beyond parody – each royal gets their own dresser and secretary and a league of staff (depending on their level of precedence), paid for by the British taxpayer – the restrictions placed on royal life, some external but many internal are enough to drive even those who have grown up in such cold, calculating environments to despair. We only have to look to the decision by more modern royals like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to essentially leave the family, to see that it is not a sustainable institution for anyone, particularly someone not born within it.
The Crown, as always is riveting, unmissable television. As events steadily approach the present, I think it is avoiding the fate of so many excellent TV shows: that of drag, of aimlessness in its middle seasons. It is more dynamic and relevant than ever – something you probably couldn’t say about the family it depicts.