"The Crown," Year Six

And so we come to the end of the road for Peter Morgan's epic dramatization of the lives of the UK's royal family over sixty years.  Season six covers the post-divorce life of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) through the marriage of Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla (Olivia Williams).  Along the way, we check in with Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville), while Prince William (Ed McVey) becomes a major character, before the final episode lets Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) have the last word.

I don't appear to have written an entry for the fifth season of "The Crown," though I know I watched it.  To be blunt, Diana's marriage troubles and short-lived romance with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) didn't do much for me, though I appreciated that this version of it gave Dodi and his father Mohamed (Salim Daw) so much narrative emphasis.  Season six is better, but it spends the first half of the season on Diana's death, and by this point there had simply been too much Diana in "The Crown."  I want to point out that Peter Morgan has already covered these events in the 2006 film, "The Queen," which is told largely from the POVs of Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Tony Blair.  In "The Crown," it's more of an ensemble affair, with Charles and other major figures getting more screentime.  I don't take much issue with how these episodes dealt with the death and aftermath, and even the appearances of Dodi and Diana's specters seemed like perfectly legitimate dramatic devices.  However, it felt less like "The Crown" and more like an entirely separate piece of Diana-centric media - and there have been a few too many of those over the last few years.

Morgan manages to course correct a little in the second half of the season.  There's an excellent final Margaret episode, featuring younger versions of Elizabeth (Viola Prettejohn) and Margaret (Beau Gadson) during WWII.  A young William, Harry (Fflyn Edwards), and Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) are properly introduced, with a few ongoing conflicts set up in case Morgan wants to return for a seventh series of "The Crown" sometime in the future.  At this point and time, unfortunately, the youngsters are pretty bland and uninteresting.  However, I feel for Imelda Staunton who isn't nearly as large a presence in her seasons of "The Crown" as her predecessors.  The finale, which shows her considering funeral arrangements and possibly stepping down in favor of Charles, has her sharing screen time with all the other actresses who have played Elizabeth in the show.  Still, it's a better showing than Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce), who mostly fades into the background, or Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), whose character arc is severely truncated.  

"The Crown" spans so much time that it feels like multiple shows under the same title, and the last two seasons are easily the weakest.  I'm sure part of it is due to Morgan being more cautious with very vocal royal family members like Harry, so the portrayals are very safe, and part of it being that the media has been so much more intrusive since the events of Diana's death that there's less space for conjecture. Individual episodes are still decent, but they no longer cohere as a greater whole.  Another issue is that many of the characters no longer feel connected to the younger versions from earlier seasons.  Debicki fares well because she and Emma Corrin are mostly on the same wavelength as Diana, and they feel like the same person.  The same is not true of Dominic West and Josh O'Connor as Charles, and Olivia Williams is so far removed from Emerald Fennell's Camilla as to be downright jarring.    

The show's production values are still as good as ever, this time around featuring recreations of Diana's funeral, Charles' second wedding, and the WWII flashbacks.  If you enjoyed prior seasons of "The Crown," I doubt you'll come away disappointed from this one.  However, I'm glad that this is the last season for the foreseeable future.

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