The Crown on Netflix

[TheHiphopopotamus]

Had a look but couldn't see another thread.

Anyone else watched any? Just seen the first episode and can't make my mind up. I'm ambivalent towards the monarchy but the production seems sumptuous. It's nice seeing all the 40's/50's fashions though.

She does! Dark hair suits her very well.

I wondered how Princess Margaret and Elizabeth Taylor had got on, they do seem rather similar. However this seems to be one of their more legendary exchanges, so perhaps Hollywood and royalty didn't mix so much in those days.

I admit, I've only got up to episode 8, and my soft spot for Matt Smith may be clouding my judgement, but I don't see what was so terrible about Prince Philip. He seems to be the only one shining a light on the whole absurdity of wandering around the world in all your finery, trying to glue together a crumbling empire. It's the same today with Wills and Kate pretending they aren't a complete anachronism in the modern world. He might turn into a twat later on though...

Gosh the Queen just doesn't interact at all with her kids!

I get that she's working all day but she also seems at the moment to have a fair bit of horse time/reading etc and never seems to spend any time with the kids at all

I wonder when they also start to have separate bedrooms? I love the set up they have with the bedroom each at each end and the two dressing areas in between, but I wondered why they had that and not just share a bed.

I suspect that's what the QM was hinting at when Elizabeth was moaning about her education. There was that infamous picture of her shaking Prince Charles' hand when she hadn't seen him for months on end. He must have been about 8! I liked the adjoining rooms with the dressing room in between. They conceived two children after this, so must have had some hanky panky!

There was a rumour the Cherie Blair, after she got pregnant, presumably surprisingly, with Leo asking the Queen what she used for contraception, to which she replied 'separate bedrooms!' But now I'm typing it, it sounds like rubbish!!!

Philip, huge entitled man child with somewhat worrying views on colonial peoples

Phil: I say! Nice hat!
Her Maj: It's a crown.

All the phil-landering, machismo, grudging acquiescence to walk behind Maj, kneel before her etc, jealousy, tantrums.

...and the thought of demanding a blow job from our own dear queen! I prefer to believe they had sex twice only for procreational purposes (there are rumours re fathers of two youngest children)

Ha ha! Yes, they have hinted at the racism and machismo. The machismo is just him being a product of his time though. Not an excuse, but this was the time women were put back in the home after the War and the whole idealised housewife and the man being the head of the house business, yet he was little more than an inconvenience after he'd done his main job of impregnating the Queen with an heir. Also, if the rumours of the youngest 2 not being Phils are true, then she has done her fair share of philandering too, no? Andy and Eddie look nothing like each other either, so it would have been two fellas!

I really think she adored him, particularly at the start of their marriage. She fought to marry him, against all advice. I think they were at it like rabbits at the beginning! They aren't Gods, they are just people, but treated like Gods.

I was just reading around the whole "Queen/Porchy" thing and apparently government papers are usually released 30 years after the fact yet two or three papers were held for 50 years and we're recently released, and there are two more which had a 100 year hold on. 2039 or something they are due to be released

Edward is almost a double of Charles though!

If it was 100 years after Andrew was conceived though, it would be 2059. I think they are Phil's. I suspect Phil has more children that Liz however

Yes. 2059.

Ooh! Thats interesting then! If it's true, I wonder if he knows? Maybe thats why Andrew's such a freeloader? He knows the gravy train might stop in 40 years! Actually, surely they should wait until he's dead too? He might stagger on to 99!

I think it was to ensure the Queen had passed and sufficient time to spare.

Philip had told him that the Queen was "very keen on sex, quite a goer"

Article also contains paternity rumours that I can't quite bring myself to repeat in full.

Very sad at the scene where the memorial to George is unveiled on a (beautifully shot) rainy day and the QM is distraught...

QM was added to the memorial after her own death, depicted at the age she was when her husband died

Just watched the last episode now. Leaves it very open for season 2, which I hope we don't have to wait a year for!

They're filming series 2 as we speak, so I'm guessing it'll be next summer before they release it, at the earliest. It took them over 3 months to film series 1 then all the editing, adding in green screen effects and music, etc.

I'm going to defend the Queen and her parenting. She's of a generation that would have been raised with Victorian ideals as to how children should behave, most of her nannies would probably have been very straight-laced and strict and I imagine the Royal household in her younger years (before the abdication) was pretty lacking in expressing emotions.

I do wonder if one of the reasons that Andrew is such an entitled twit is that the Queen realised her mistakes with Charles and Anne and spoiled him as a result.

I think she did spoil Andrew. Maybe she had settled down more and enjoyed motherhood more. I'm reading Phils biography, and this seems to be so far, quite an accurate representation of that biography. Apparently he was quite hands on and not only slept naked, but swam naked and taught the kids how to swim while naked!
I think they must be doing Andrew and Edwards births in series 2, if they are doing decades- 1947-1956, then series 2 1957-1967. I wonder if they will touch on the paternity claims. I thought the marriage settled down after Phil came back from Australia.

I've watched the first 3 and love them. Amazing how they make it all so intriguing, layered and suspenseful when we all know the story .
I don't think they have the queen mother right though. I think they haven't worked out how they see her, so she is a shadowy character so far which I don't think she was in real life.

Agree completely that the QM character isn't quite right. Otherwise the whole season is all pretty flawless I love it - but for some reason her character doesn't sit right with me. She doesn't seem to have any sense of humour which i think she did in abundance in real life...??

She's a bit... wet...

She never struck me as wet

Yes that's it. My memory of the QM was that there was always a little smile and twinkle in her eye ... the character here makes her out as a bit of a misery guts!

Well, this is the QM in the worst period of her life, shortly after she was widowed. To me she is forever Helena Bonham Carter in The King's Speech (although in later life the Brummie Spitting Image puppet) but in both invariably feisty and partly drunk . I am hoping renovating the falling-down castle will give her some of her old spirit back. By which I mean the spirit of HBC.

There are stories about the QM not being the most pleasant of women though, aren't there? As she said in the last episode, her husband, home and status was taken away from her so suddenly. She doesn't seem wet to me, but there's a streak of nasty that I must admit I never expected. What is the falling down castle? At first I thought it was Balmoral, but that's been in the family for ages, hasn't it? I wasn't sure, because why would she need another castle??