The Crown Season 5: A fall from grace
The highly anticipated fifth season of ‘The Crown’ failed to live up to its hype and brings up the question: what is a historical drama really meant to be?
Originally written on November 28, 2022
There are some things you can always count on, and for Netflix, that has got to be “The Crown.” Since its first season aired in 2016, “The Crown” has consistently brought in quality content, high ratings, and guaranteed Emmy nominations (and wins) for their biannual revolving casts. Season 5, released on Nov. 9, had an added hype, not just because of a new cast led by the iconic Imelda Staunton, but also because it was coming just two months after Queen Elizabeth’s death, 70 years into her reign.
The season was centered around the ’90s, which even the most casual royal-watchers would know was an incredibly tumultuous time for the monarchy. From the dramatic dissolution of Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s marriage and subsequent tabloid war between them, to the growing irrelevance of the institution the Queen represented, the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, had a wealth of content to cover and four seasons worth of experience in his arsenal. Needless to say, viewers had high expectations. But as we’ve seen with the end of the second Elizabethan era, nothing lasts forever. The show’s penultimate season, though packed with strong performances across the board, fails to maintain momentum and falls short as a historical drama with fictionalized ideations of reality.
By no means is “The Crown” meant to portray the absolute truth. It is a historical drama, and even the earlier seasons are about relatively recent history. What made the previous seasons so successful was that they offered a narrative surrounding the young Queen Elizabeth that was not just unknown, but also placed her in a larger political and historical sphere. While there were several character studies conducted throughout the previous seasons, season 5 felt like a constant introspective study of the members of the monarchy rather than the historical implications of their flaws and increasingly outdated customs. While this may have indicated that as the world was becoming more modern, the monarchy’s role was obsolete — a major theme in this season — it lacked the charm of the older seasons that followed Elizabeth navigating her role amid an ever-changing society. All in all, it came across as a filler season, dragging out a handful of years to save some of the most bombastic events for a grander series finale.
In the lead-up of this season’s release, the British tabloids steadily crafted an attack on the series, indicating that the palace’s PR team was possibly wary of how ten bingeable episodes, wrought with controversies involving Diana and divorce, may reignite visceral hatred for their new monarch.Season 4 came with an onslaught of fresh backlash as younger viewers gained more insight into the scandalous Diana-Charles-Camilla love triangle, with most aligning their sympathies with young Diana. However, it seems like the doubling down was premature — their portrayal of Charles as a modern, progressive young man eager to rectify the institution’s old-fashioned ways is actually the best PR they could have asked for just two months into his reign. While one can argue that the show depicts a more balanced portrayal of the two-sided, messy “War of the Waleses,” it is undeniable that propping Charles up as an ultramodern prince with big plans to change the monarchy’s future comes at Diana’s expense; her complexities and mental health issues were on the backburner. Even her paranoia, exploited by BBC journalist Martin Bashir, seemed to fuel her apparent agenda against the Royal Family. Dragging out the divorce and its aftermath felt like nothing more than teasing Diana’s untimely death.
You can always count on “The Crown” for an exceptionally apt metaphor, but this time around, the show writers did not rest until they spelt it out for you three times over, just in case you missed what they were trying to say. Staunton is not given much to do as she mopes around, reminded by everyone and their mother that just like the “Britannia,” a royal yacht due for her retirement, or the newer model television she resists having her second-in-line grandson installing, her time is running out.
This, of course, doesn’t land with any viewer who isn’t living under a rock. Elizabeth’s got three decades to go, and while she may have been in constant crisis over it, we can’t help but roll our eyes at her, simply because we know. Elizabeth isn’t the only victim of the glaring metaphor — Diana was Guy Fawkes during her notorious 1995 Panorama interview. After hyping it up and outlining the metaphor for two whole episodes, presenting it in disjointed clips made it an anticlimactic final punch to what was left of Charles and Diana’s fairytale marriage. Diana’s statements in that interview are infamous. It is understandable that recreating it would seem redundant. Without showing the extent of the bombshell, the Guy Fawkes comparison (often pointed out throughout Episode 8, “Gunpowder”) only further vilifies Diana in favor of the Royal Family. Rather than adding any depth, these metaphors only diminished the quality of the writing.
One of the show’s greatest strengths was the way it managed to contextualize the larger historical and political landscape to tell the story of a monarchy that, at this point, is mostly an accessory. However, with season 5 comes another glaring flaw: far too much focus on the characters’ personal lives leaves little room for context. The Prime Minister, who generally encapsulated a large role within the series beyond his/her relationship with the Queen, was narrative-wise entirely inconsequential, besides serving as a mediator for Charles and Diana’s divorce. In the season finale, he ended up losing the election to Tony Blair by the widest margin in nearly a century — viewers would never know why. The absence of such crucial information creates an incohesive narrative and results in a lackluster season.
Two of the season’s best episodes were Episode 3, “Mou Mou,” and Episode 6, “Ipatiev House.” While both of these episodes seemed disconnected from the rest of the season, they branched out of the inner workings of Buckingham Palace and were the perfect example of how Morgan managed to immerse viewers into different settings and time periods. They were standouts in an otherwise bland season. Episode 4, “Annus Horribilis,” served as the greatest disappointment. It referenced the Queen’s uncharacteristic candor in her 1992 speech, but wasted a majority of its screen time on Princess Margaret’s already resolved affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend. While it is a story that serves as a fitting reminder of the many tough sacrifices Elizabeth and her family have had to make for duty, the reunion felt like nothing more than fan service. It failed to deliver with a callback no one asked for.
After facing much backlash due to the sensitive nature of depicting the end of Diana’s life and potential flack the Royal Family may have to face so soon after the Queen’s death, Netflix added a disclaimer to the show’s trailer, which said that it was “inspired by real events” and was a “fictional dramatization.” This brings up the question: do historical dramas owe audiences the truth or are they allowed creative liberties when telling stories about real events and real people? On top of that, how do you create television about recent history and people who are still alive?
Historical dramas are exactly that — dramas. Peter Morgan would never know what conversations occurred behind closed doors and what were the motivations behind certain controversial decisions. Much of the earlier seasons depicted imagined interactions between characters. What’s different this time is that there are many people around to debunk them. Former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair have already come out and said that Prince Charles never approached them in an attempt to pull the rug out from under his mother. Crafting a historical drama deviating from the truth when there is no evidence to support these falsities, and when there are people who can easily discredit your storyline just feels lazy. This season lacks the novelty of the previous ones because of that. We can’t ask Winston Churchill what really happened in his conversations with Queen Elizabeth, so “The Crown” got away with a lot more than it can now, and time allowed for more clarity regardless.
At the end of the day, we can only hope that the final season can live up to the standards of the earlier ones. A historical drama is meant to transport the viewer to another time, informatively and enjoyably. When creating a historical drama there’s two things to consider — whether the writer is offering a valuable perspective, and whether the target audience will be engrossed in what they are watching. While Morgan was never afraid to dress down the monarchy in seasons past, season 5 felt like less of a critique, and more of a tribute.
Co-written with Kanita Tariq.
