The Crown - series 3

[southeastdweller]

I'm so looking forward to seeing this when it returns next Sunday!

Have also just worked that Anne had only given birth to Zara two months before Charles and Diana's wedding. She looks great!

Well written article. Thank you for posting.

The Shawcross article is interesting, but I disagree with him both about Philip and about the treatment of religion. Morgan may be an atheist (as am I) but I think The Crown is very rare amongst British drama in taking Christian faith seriously without sensationalising it. The Billy Graham episode leaps to mind, and Philip’s return to faith.

I was presented to Princess Anne at my Graduation, she was surprisingly small, I expected someone tall and strapping given her sportiness. I think I would have passed her by in the street. She had to stand for hour nodding to each graduate as their name was announced. Every couple of hours she had five minutes to sit down - what a boring day for her - it was bad enough for us to sit waiting to be called for their turn to walk across the stage.

Still, not a bad day's work for what she gets in return!

We attended a dinner with Princess Anne years ago and she was much warmer than the press portrays her. DH was seated beside her lady-in-waiting and she was chatty and fun.

I've seen Princess Anne and she is quite small and very lean. Jolly good fun too.

Anne is also an excellent sportswoman in her own right.

The others...

Second children are often the best adjusted in the end, i think. Calm and rational. Regardless of status. They learn what not to do from their older siblings like me

Just on the Duke of Windsor episode now. Charles is really coming across very well, but I'll confess I always did like him and think he will make a fine king.

I actually like OC and think much of the criticism is unfair. Claire Foy was different but so was the Queen - CF portrayed a Queen who felt a little out of her depth and new to the job, OC is playing an older, wiser, vastly experienced Queen who knows who she is (even if she doesn't love who she is).

The Aberfan episode was outstanding and I was in tears the whole time. I too had never heard of it, 80's born in Yorkshire.the bit where they blow the whistle and everyone goes silent to listen out for children had my hairs standing on end! Superb television.

However the Moondust episode was SO boring, I agree with a PP, watching an overprivileged man having a mid life crisis is a real snooze fest

The Moondust episode was bizarre. They could have mentioned the moon landing and the astronauts' visit but framed the episode around Philip's mother dying, the founding of the retreat house and Philip considering what active faith meant in the context of his mother's bravery during the war. It could still have contrasted scientific achievements (the moon landing) with moral ones (Princess Alice) but without the frankly nonsensical midlife crisis being shoehorned in.

@ThatsMeInTheSpotlight you've bit the nail on the head.

I suppose it was clever in that the episode didn't reveal his mother had already died until the very end and you think "ah so that's what this nonsense was really about" but in terms of substance it made for very dull viewing and put Philip in an awful light.

Since he Princess Alice episode I've fallen into a rabbit hole of research about her and what a woman! I love it when I hear about female achievements I never knew about and even better when popular culture sheds light on them.

A series or film just about Princess Alice would be well worth the effort.

I've just watched the Duke of Windsor episode also. I really hope it isn't true that Charles admired him as some sort of forward thinking type who shook up the establishment and thought of himself as being equivalent to his uncle. Because Edward was a dreadfully weak, vain man who thought the UK should have made a treaty with Hitler, and surely Charles was well aware of that.

Tobias Menzies has been the highlight of this season for me I do hope he is recognised come awards season

Halfway through series 2 for the second time.

Do you think that 'Uncle David' regretted abdicating? I've often wondered that. I've no doubt he was completely emotionally reliant on Wallis and I think he was a weak and not terribly nice chap. What a dull life he must have led for the last 30 or so years of his life.

Apparently Fergie has made it publicly known that she wants the actress who played Demelza in Poldark to play her when the time comes..

It seems Claire Foy is returning in season 4 to appear in a flashback to Elizabeth giving her 21st birthday speech!

I have watched it all now and was a bit surprised they missed out Annes wedding to Mark Phillips. She married him in 1973 but it seems to be have been ignored.

Why did they ignore that, I wonder?

I remember that day well. My mother gave me a bollocking for wearing a top that "made me look like a tart".

I went to a neighbour's to watch the wedding as we didn't have colour telly.

I never wore that top again

I don't think David was ever cut out for kingship (if that's an actual word).

I read somewhere that Wallis wasn't even particularly keen on marrying him. He was really dependent on her apparently, and needed her to kind of humiliate him.

There was a rumour that Wallis was the only woman who could satisfy him sexually.

There was also another rumour that Wallis was hermaphrodite. Or something...

Not sure any of that is correct.

There were lots of rumours about David & Wallis. I’m sure most of them just to discredit them further in the people’s eyes.

I read somewhere that Wallis wasn't even particularly keen on marrying him.

Yes I also read this. She wasn't keen at all but with him having given up the throne and all that, she felt she kind of had to.

I am the only one who thinks the theme music has been rearranged a wee bit? It sounds slightly softer to me.

Gunpowder yy that episode created a weak, whiny Philip at odds with who he is in every other episode. Plus it made the moon landings seem tedious when they were anything but! It's a bit like the jokes about local newspapers reducing the Titanic to 'local man lost at sea'. The moon landings became 'Liz doesn't want to leave a message and Philip is trying to find one'.

I wonder if the next series will have an episode focused on Anne and Mark Phillips where they'll get married and then nearly kidnapped. And if The Troubles (which have been conspicuously absent) will be shoehorned into the episode where Mountbatten is killed.

The more I think about it, the more annoyed I'm getting at the completely nonsensical approach to chronology.