Spectator by Seema Goswami: When the screen gets the royal treatment
Watching the latest season of The Crown seems like an exercise in voyeurism as it charts events we remember all too vividly
So the final season of The Crown dropped on Netflix. And there was a certain predictability to the way I dropped everything else and settled down to binge watch it. And now, after that marathon viewing session, here are some of my thoughts.
The more recent the events covered by The Crown, the more uncomfortable the watch. Now that we are into the period in which Princess Diana died tragically, watching the show feels like an exercise in voyeurism. We see her talking with her young sons, William and Harry, on the phone, all three oblivious to the fact that this will be their last conversation. We look on as Prince Charles wakes up his ‘darling boys’ to break it to them that their mother has died. Mercifully, the scene is sans any audible dialogue but just seeing the expressions of devastation on William and Harry’s faces makes you feel as if you are intruding on a family tragedy.
Elizabeth Debicki looks uncannily like Diana and is decked out in an identical wardrobe to depict the Princess’ last days on earth. But for all her cocking her head sideways and looking up shyly in a manner that is supposed to mimic the Princess, she fails singularly in projecting the charisma and star quality that made Diana such a supernova on the world stage. She plays Diana as a victim when in reality Diana was emerging, post-divorce, as a significant force. Diana’s strength and power as she took on the royal family are missing in this portrayal which is keen to emphasise her sadness and loneliness.
You never feel more regretful of the rift that has formed between William and Harry than when you watch the bond between the brothers as they negotiate boyhood together within the confines of the royal family. They laugh and josh with their parents as a team. They seem suspicious of the sudden closeness between their mother and Dodi Fayed. And when tragedy strikes, William is the protective brother who tries to shield Harry from the world and the knowledge that things will never be the same again for either of them. What a shame that brotherly bond could not endure into adulthood.
And finally, why does Peter Morgan, the creator of The Crown, hate the late Queen Elizabeth? Whatever else you might think of her, she was an adored grandmother, with all her grandkids testifying to how much she loved them. And yet, even as Diana lies dead and her sons are inconsolable, we don’t get as much as a glimpse of the Queen comforting them — even though both William and Harry credited her with getting them through that awful time. But I guess a remote and unfeeling Queen is what worked best in Morgan’s script, so here we are. As they don’t say, the pen is mightier than the crown — at least in the universe of The Crown.
