The Crown: season 5

[KillingMeDeftly]

Anyone seen this yet? I'm not quite as convinced by the casting for this season as I was for previous ones but will withhold judgement until I've watched the whole series.

Elizabeth Debicki looks the part as Diana, although I thought Emma Corrin captured her voice better. Dominic West is very flattering casting for Charles but Olivia Williams as Camilla is uncanny. I never thought she looked anything like her but they've made her a dead ringer! Same goes for Jonny Lee Miller as John Major.

It looks like this season will cover events up to and including Diana's Panorama interview.

I also think the series has focussed too much on Diana’s relationships and infatuations. The Diana they’re portraying wouldn’t have been so insanely popular with the public. What they loved was her ability to connect with people, her work with AIDS patients, (which I saw in another documentary basically entirely changed how people felt towards those with HIV especially in the USA), how lovely she was with children etc. This series just seems to have made her a vacuous paranoid airhead always on the lookout for a new man. Very one dimensional.
It must have been awful to have such a public betrayal and none of the strength it took to deal with this is shown.
Having said that, I am enjoying it, but just not as much as previous series. I’m not finding the Queen and PP’s interactions believable in the slightest.

I have finished it.

It wasn't anywhere near the best series. None of them came out looking good for me. That said, I remember this period of the royal family and none of them came across well at the time either.

The casting really was nowhere as good as it was in previous years. I had to keep reminding myself who they were - especially Phillip and Dominic west just wasn't good as Charles either.

I'm only up to episode 3, I'm finding the whole Al Fayed episode bizarre and uncomfortable 😐

I think PP and PC are terribly cast I keep forgetting who they are meant to be. Genuinely don’t understand why Jonathon Pryce was cast he was a great actor but he’s so wrong for the part!
also found it dreary. I know it was a bad time for the family but does that really mean it has to be completely devoid of colour and life?

I thought the actors that layer PC and PP last season were excellent. Shame they didn’t just keep them and age them up a bit!

And Margaret and I also liked Olivia Coleman as queen

I'm currently really enjoying the Mohammed Al Fayed episode. Actually finding it quite touching that he's being portrayed as a person for once rather than a caricature.

Do you not think the focus on him being essentially a super fan who would do anything to manoeuvre himself into the queen's radar a bit weird?

I don't think he was a "super fan" of the Queen exactly. He just thought that acceptance by the monarchy would make him feel "British". It's some sort of strange colonial mindset that I've encountered before but unlike most people, he had the funds to try and achieve this!

You can't buy your way in, no matter how much dosh you throw at it. The royal doors are open for your money, bring it on. It doesn't mean you're a welcome guest in person. Diana knew exactly how much fury the apparent relationship with Dodi would cause.

That was what I meant - that desire to fit in and 'be British' and accepted by people who were only ever going to see you as second rate. It's not an uncommon story, albeit in this case with lots of money to throw at the cause!

That's my reason for feeling uncomfortable - I think the show made him look cringey and over the top, whereas they could have portrayed the feeling of wanting to fit in, if that makes sense.

Onto episode 10 now and the Blairing of Bertie Carvel makes him look very odd. Have they given him fake teeth?

Not only is QM awfully cast there is no relationship between her and HM. I watched a real life clip of the queen saying she had a tear in her eye because of the wind at the races and her mum saying maybe she was emotional and the queens charming retort was 'no, mummy!' When she was in her 60s!

@geraniumsandsunshine I love !

Overall season 5 had its moments but was nowhere near as good as previous seasons. And the Queen herself seemed to only be a peripheral character this time.

I’ve been quite surprised reading some reviews and posts here saying that The Crown is unsympathetic to the RF and very pro-Diana. To me, Charles and Camilla are coming across quite well. Tampongate was entirely portrayed as a slightly silly joke rather than a sleazy horror, and Diana is just appearing to be an incorrigible manipulator who puts herself before everyone including her children. And there’s one person who has been unequivocally shown as decent and trying to do the right thing but being treated appallingly, and that’s poor William.

I agree Diana doesn't come out of this well at all. I suspect, even though I liked Diana for her charisma and compassion, that she was a deeply flawed person, perhaps because of never really developing herself fully before marriage as well. Her Bashir interview was painful in real-life to watch the doe-eyes and self-pity, that's reflected in this series IMO.

We finished and it was a dud compared to other series. I found Charles and Diana were painful to watch and the Queen weak and insecure, Phillip mean and also weak.

The only one I liked was Al Fayed. But the characterisation and themes weren’t well done

Where I think it departs from true life in terms of sympathetic characters is probably Margaret. The real timeline of her relationship makes it clear that she could have married at 25 had she given up royal life. The timeline in The Crown makes it look like she is much more of a victim than someone that did have a choice, just not the one she wanted (to remain royal and marry Peter Townsend). Plus it also didn't dwell on the age difference at 17 and whatever he was at that age, I would not be happy for my 17 year old to take up with a married older man, and I don't think most people would.

Tampongate was entirely portrayed as a slightly silly joke rather than a sleazy horror,

I think it was just a silly joke though!

I wasn’t arguing with that being the case, but it wasn’t the way it was portrayed in the media at the time, and it would have been easy for them to twist the narrative of the show to make it sleazier if they’d really wanted to put the boot into Charles.

Sorry, misunderstood you.

William is Dominic West's son on real life.

@Ozgirl75 I agree. Diana and the AIDS patient was a defining moment. This portrayal of Diana just makes you wonder what all the fuss was about.

I think it is a pretty poor series and does not give a good flavour of what was happening at all. And what was that long made up conversation between Diana and Charles about as well?

There is loads of footage from this time, interviews with Charles and Diana and others, and lots and lots of things happened. So it seems strange that each episode keeps spending lots of time on inconsequential stuff.

And it is a VERY sympathetic portrayal of the Royal Family. The press at the time were the total opposite.

@LoobyDop William was a child at the time so I would not expect anything except a nice portrayal of him.