AIBU To Be Disappointed With The Crown (Season 5)

[TheShellBeach]

I've enjoyed all the episodes of The Crown so far and was really looking forward to the start of Season 5.
We started watching it last night and we were terribly disappointed.
Imelda Staunton is wonderful as the Queen but she seems to have a very small role in the proceedings so far.
AIBU to wish they'd left it at the end of Season 4? Or is there a reason why Season 5 is just a bit "meh"?

Tbh that's very much the image the St Diana the Wronged cultists (of whom there are A LOT,) have of her. Perhaps the filmmakers merely knew their audience?

A couple of them just aren't posh enough.

When you hear P Margret speaking you can hardly understand her she's so posh!
''Ears'' for ''yes''.

The Queen needs to be posher and to be honest Diana was really really plumy as well. ''Be quaaaat'' = be quiet.

Actor playing PP doesn't seem to have enough on screen presence.

Charles just seems nothing like Charles.

Diana again - i know she went through a painfully thin phase but that was around the wedding. After that she was slim but toned.

Yes to all this. Completely agree

I've watched 5 episodes so far. In fact, when I say 'watched', I mean more that I have listened as I have got into the habit of only ever listening to TV and crafting at the same time. This is relevant because there was a moment, I think in ep 4, when Imelda Staunton's accent was so good, I actually thought it was Claire Foy back again. I guess it was more an impersonation of CF than of Her Maj, but it was uncanny. So I don't entirely agree with all the criticism of IS. That said, in ep 5 she lost the connection again.

Likewise, Dominic West sometimes catches the intonation of Prince Charles, and his mannerisms are good. Agree he is too good looking but I'm not sure that matters.
For those who are younger here, I don't think it is fair to criticise IS for being drab and dumpy as the Queen. She (her Maj, not Imelda) did go through a phase when she appeared incredibly drab and grumpy and out of touch with the public. If you only remember her in the last 20 years you may not know that. She definitely mellowed and learnt to smile in public in the last 2 decades of her life.

Absolute tosh imo.

I'm 59 and so remember this period very well.

Bad casting - bad script - bad acting too 👎

Frankly I've been disappointed with the whole monarchy for years.

I'm surprised so many people liked the casting of Diana! I think it's very one-note, preferred Emma Corrin.

the actress who plays Anne is a dead ringer for Princess Margaret, which is very confusing!

I’m enjoying it. Mainly as a Republican I’m enjoying seeing again what an utter spoilt twat Charles is.

I don’t find Dominic West attractive in the slightest, but that aside he doesn’t have anything of the sense of Charles. The now King comes across as hesitant, intellectual, petulant before he married Camilla. West conveys none of that and I don’t get why West keeps moving his jaw like that, most peculiar.

Jonathan Pryce is coming across as lacking confidence, not something I’ve ever associated w the D of E. The casting is mostly quite off. And Andrew’s wig is dreadful.

Weird we haven’t seen Sarah properly yet. The script just seems to jump around in ways it did not in previous years.

The jaw thing is so weird and distracting

Agree with @Germolenequeen it’s very bad this season. Casting is the worst it’s been, West is nowhere near camp enough for Charles, Pryce is a great actor but totally wrong for this, not stiff enough. All the Princess Margarets have been terrible apart from HB-C who was at least in the ballpark physically. They haven’t got anywhere near with the QM. Colman was much better than Staunton as HMQ. Staunton’s Queen just comes across as dim.
Found the Fayed and Romanov episodes interesting but I’m not going to bother with the rest of it.

Staunton’s Queen also seems so mean-spirited. I don’t recall her being such a miserable git in public, perhaps she was in private, but she does come across as petty and dim. Coleman and Foy did not portray her as lacking in curiosity (but then that’s the script to blame in that regard).

@entropynow - doesn’t Harry have a big contract with Netflix? Perhaps that is part of it too.

I like the actors, I think they are all pretty good, it's the stories that are boring. Perhaps I just remember the events too well, and the parts which are supposed to be behind closed doors just seem a bit meh.

I think Lesley Manville is much more like Margaret than HBC was. I like HBC, but she always seems to be HBC rather than the character she plays. Prince Charles is awful casting and I far preferred last season's princess Anne. I thought she was superb. This one is good but doesn't really look like her and has no presence. Camilla is uncanny!

The casting of the queen mother is shocking!

Agree that the Al Fayed episode was a v good one, and more like the spirit of older episodes, it’s just that it didn’t feel like it necessarily warranted an entire episode during what was actually maybe the most dramatic and fraught period of recent royal history when other things were brushed over this series. Maybe that’s also because they seem to have covered a much shorter period in this series than previous, I think they were typically a decade a series and this was only 5 years?

Just watched all 10 and it’s awful. Very boring and mild compared to other seasons.

I always see Prince Philip as caustic, quick, slightly irritated and Jonathan Pryce has him as sort of kindly and pleasant. Where are the inappropriate asides? The biting remarks? He was cross with Charles but I think he would have been different, more sarcastic maybe?

I loved the Al Fayad episode and I also liked Yeltsin, he was exactly as I remember him.

I agree that Fergie should be in this because her affairs and her in general were always in the papers back then. I know now we see Andrew as this awful sexual predator but at the time we didn’t, he was still quite a handsome military man

I always see Prince Philip as caustic, quick, slightly irritated and Jonathan Pryce has him as sort of kindly and pleasant.

I thought the same 7 years ago when Jonathan Pryce played Cardinal Wolsey in 'Wolf Hall'. Wolsey was hard as nails and ruthless as they come, but Pryce played him as a sort of cuddly granddad type. Same seems to be happening here. He's playing Philip as kind of a generic old man, and has none of Philip's presence and personality.

The actress playing Diana seems too tall!

I didn't like S4 (had a few good moments and the Aberfan disaster ep was great) and thought it was very overrated but decided I'd give S5 a go and eh, it's not good is it? Really boring and the acting is mostly terrible.

I don't mind Imelda Staunton as The Queen and Jonny Lee Miller as John Major but the rest are verging on parody especially Dominic West as Charles (get your damn hand out of your pocket and act man) which is a shame as I usually like him. I don't think Elizabeth Debicki is anywhere near as good at playing Diana as Emma Corrin was and I'm not sure who Marcia Warren turned up as but it's certainly not the Queen Mother! (Mind you I though that about Gillian Anderson as Thatcher. I thought she was appallingly bad and came on like a Spitting Image puppet yet won all the awards - - - so what do I know lol).

We're a long way from S1 and 2 that's for sure. It's a show that's definitely overstayed it's welcome.

she is sooooo tall!

I think it is really good and the story is very humanely told no favoring either side. A compassionate story.