‘I’m afraid we don’t do fathers and sons very well in this family…’
The Crown has always struggled to find a balance between delivering a factual account of historical events and attempting to humanise a group of people who by their very nature and design are both inscrutable and lacking in humanity. I don’t want this to become a political diatribe but I will say that I’m no fan of the concept of a monarchy (although I did have some begrudging admiration for Lizzie herself) and that will always colour any opinion I have on The Crown. Let’s dive in…
Imelda Staunton returns as Her Majesty and remains impressively stoic throughout even in the face of literal ghosts from the past popping up left, right and centre. You may recall that season one through five of The Crown boasted zero ghosts, being as it were a historical drama, and yet season six comes roaring out of the traps with many ghosts. “Add more ghosts” seems an odd decision in a TV show about the Royal Family and in the end it’s not just odd but baffling and honestly very weird. How can we possibly take a show seriously that has Princess Diana’s ghost appearing to Prince Charles to playfully chastise him? What were the writers thinking?
It is perhaps understandable that this final season of The Crown drowned under the weight of its own self-importance given that filming was halted following the real-life death of Queen Elizabeth II in September of 2022. That is no excuse, however, for bad writing, dull and repetitive storylines and mawkish sentimentality. It appears nobody involved knew how to end this thing appropriately and so after six mostly great seasons we are left with something that feels frustratingly unfinished – a vast disappointment.
