The Crown S4 Part One

Well it used to be that the big Sunday Night dramas happened weekly on BBC1. These days, though, an entire series drops at once and “everyone” binge-watches it, picking it apart on Twitter. The Crown has meticulously gone through the Queen’s monarchy from the beginning with Churchill, and we have now reached living memory with Olivia Coleman in the title role and Margaret Thatcher played by Gillian Anderson.

The Crown is a lavish visual drama with attention to period detail that seems authentic even though it can’t always be. A close up of a Bakelite phone, albeit a posh model from Buckingham Palace, takes its place with some interesting performances by actors who are inhabiting characters that we think we know.


This series opens with the spectre of Irish Republican terrorism as The Conservatives win the 1977 election and Mrs Thatcher goes to the Palace. The Queen and Prince Philip have already gossiped about the notion of a female Prime Minister, and then they meet! But there’s not just that, there’s the Prince of Wales, whose fragility has been a constant theme. Now he is under pressure to find a wife, but not Camilla who is married. The Duke of Edinburgh is a tough father figure and Lord Mountbatten has become a surrogate to him. The big crashing theme is that Charles is steering away from the course of the Monarchy and he needs to settle down with someone appropriate. Then Mountbatten’s assassination by the IRA is interspersed with a Royal hunting party. The twelve bores are loaded and fired, and a fishing trip off the coast of Ireland are dramatised together, with the crescendo of the bomb. The Queen greets the news with steeliness but the utter devastation of bereavement is very prominent and interestingly put in the background of the action.


Also somewhat in the background: Princess Anne (Erin Doherty) is likeable and self-effacing: another ally for Charles as she struggles with her own role and career. And about to be very much plucked from the background, Emma Corrin’s Lady Diana Spencer is so well played. To portray such an important and divisive figure at this point in history is laudable, and how she becomes the woman who will


Gillian Anderson has more to her than X-Files and Sex Education. The cleverly outspoken and talented actress has been popular for decades, and although people had “feelings” about her as Thatcher, she does a pretty impressive job. The hair, wardrobe and make-up is all on point and she resembles Margaret Thatcher as much as any of the other cast resemble their counterpart. Olivia Coleman doesn’t especially look like Queen Elizabeth but manages to be regal enough to embody her, whilst also managing to create an informal Queen—the Queen we don’t get to see but believe we know.


If this had gone out on the BBC people would have had to resign by now. The impact of Republican Terrorism, the prospect of a feisty response to Trade Unions and all that’s to come feels very potent now, perhaps more than ever. How will this history play out in a drama that’s for an International market. Can it deal with these serious and current political touchstones and continue to be what it’s always been a bit: like the John Lewis Christmas advert but with forty plus years of history?

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