As of this moment, I’m four episodes into The Crown Season 5. I’m surprised by what’s already been covered and what hasn’t, and I’m struck yet again by how much of the show will piss off the Windsors. The almost-casual way that Peter Morgan deconstructs the Windsors’ awfulness, their selfishness, their inherent uselessness. It’s incredible. While I loved the second episode, “The System,” about Diana’s collaboration with Andrew Morton on Diana: Her True Story, I was fascinated by Peter Morgan’s choice to introduce such an extensive background on Mohamed Al-Fayed in the third episode, “Mou Mou.”
In “Mou Mou,” what Morgan did so well was so people who were considered peripheral to the Windsors’ story – and Diana’s story in particular – when really these peripheral characters expose so much about the racism, carelessness and selfishness of the royals. Mohamed Al-Fayed had been trying to buy his way into British establishment legitimacy for decades, only to be constantly rebuffed and looked down upon. Before now, I had no idea about the life and times of Sydney Johnson either – Johnson was born in the Bahamas, and he began working for the Duke of Windsor when he (Sydney) was just 16 years old. Edward taught him how to be a royal valet, and Johnson served Edward to his last days. Wallis fired Johnson soon after her husband’s passing, and years later, Johnson and Al-Fayed became acquainted, and Al-Fayed hired him as not only a personal valet, but someone who could help him restore Villa Windsor in France.
The story of Sydney Johnson and Al-Fayed is one of outsiders treating each other with dignity, respect and grace all while their societal “betters” treat everyone they encounter like garbage. It struck me as I watched “Mou Mou” that THIS story was worse for the Windsors than any cold recitation of the tampon phone call. Morgan was brilliant for putting Diana with Al-Fayed at the horse show too – it showed the ease with which Diana charmed everyone, and how it came to be that Diana had so much affection for Al-Fayed and he with her. They were both fundamentally outsiders, drawn to each other.
Also: Peter Morgan gave humanity to Dodi Al-Fayed too. He wasn’t just a plus-one in the story of Diana’s final days. Dodi was beloved by his father. Father and son would have done anything for each other. Dodi was there, with Diana, because his father asked him to be there.
Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Crown.
The Mou Mou episode was unexpected and so compelling. Glad you highlighted it.
Through the story of an outsider, we see even more so, how incredibly shallow the royal insiders are.
This episode is my favourite one so far, I’m 4 episodes in. It really shows how terribly racist and self centred the Windors, and particularly Elizabeth, the “friendly granny” really was. racist and selfish. Just so good.
I just finished it. It was incredible.
I loved the portrayals of Mohammed and Sydney – it was absolutely crushing to see them dismissed by the Windsors.
I loved this episode too, particularly after Al-Fayed restored the Villa and the Windsors sat around and said what was theirs with NO offer of financial resitution to him after he paid the back taxes to the French Gov’t. That seen spoke volumns; everything belongs to the crown. Also, the episode in which the Queen puts pressure on John Major to refit the M/Y BRITTANIA, classic.
That was really distasteful. If she cared so much about its heritage and personal meaning to her, then she should pay for the refittings herself. Always trying to grift.
Yes, it was really damaging in more ways than I thought.
The whole Britannia debacle was brilliant- “the only thing to call my own”….please…..
They should all be worried at this point.
right?! I laughed out loud at that
We can’t overlook the fact that Al-Fayed was also racist to Sydney at first meet. He wanted him fired because he didn’t fit the aesthetics and only hired him later because of his connections to the former king.
If he was a regular black man (no royal connections) he would’ve been treated poorly by everyone’s including ‘Mou Mou’.
Thank you! He fired him for being Black and then found out he’d been Edward’s valet and embraced him. I read more after the episode and there was some arms dealing and other unsavory stuff leading to Al-Fayed’s accumulation of wealth. The episode was fascinating and I agree that Morgan made a sensitive choice in humanizing Dodi, bit I think if we peeled back any layers on the father we’d find some Windsor level horrors beneath.
Yes-I think there’s a little glossing over of Al Fayed.
Fun fact abt the al-Fayeds, which I’m sure you already know, @BettyRose: Dodi’s first cousin, is Jamal Khashoggi. Dodi’s mother was the sister of Jamal Khashoggi’s father, and both were siblings of Adnan Khashoggi, known yacht connoisseur, and arms dealer.
Also remember that the staff at Harrods were treated like poo. They had CCTV in the staff changing rooms!
Speaking of unsavory gains, Charles II commissioned a massive fleet to allow the crown to profit mightily from the trans Atlantic slave trade. No one’s money is as dirty as the BRF’s.
Oh my goodness, yes, al Fayed was quite the arrogant fellow himself & ONLY re-hired Sydney because of his connections.
I loved that they kept that part in . Anti-blackness is global. It is especially pronounced in none white groups or individuals that aspire to whiteness or white acceptance. The Arab world is incredibly colorist and Anti-black in the extreme
@CaitC – yes to this! The antiblackness is global. My heart broke at this. What did we do wrong, world?
I think it’s one of the points though. Fayed is racist and is obsessed with British society. The latter outweighs the former for him in this instance.
And all this nonsense about Meghan ‘lying’?!?!
Yes, AND there’s also a lot of internalized racism and colonialization going on here, too. As a brown woman from a former colonized nation, watching the elder Mr. Fayed order the dismissal of Mr. Johnson made me wince because I’ve seen this behavior in members of my family (and even in myself, if i’m being completely honest) toward other brown people and Black people. The impulse to emulate and please white people can be that strong
I was surprised that the showrunners included this story — pleasantly so, and for the most part, the episode captured some of the interior struggles and contradictions that POC from former colonies experience. And how, even when one tries to decenter whiteness, the hegemony of racism stubbornly remains.
@coneofuncertainty
Thank you for sharing your experience/thoughts.
We are all in it together.
I – black Caribbean widower – live, with my two mixed race children, sandwiched between two Egyptian families and I feel like those black folk who moved into white US neighbourhoods in the 60s.
Yes! He was awful to Sydney and only hired him because he was useful to him and as a status symbol (the King’s valet works for ME). He grew to obviously respect and care for him but there’s no scene where he admits he was wrong for his racism towards him.
I was just about to comment about how Al-Fayed treated Sydney Johnson. Without that Windsor connection, Sydney would have been looking for a new job. And I’m afraid I have to disagree with how Al-Fayed treated Dodi, either. It’s not until Chariots of Fire wins an Academy Award and David Putnam thanks Dodi and Muhammed that his father starts to care about him. They also make it seem like Al-Fayed’s first marriage is some Romeo & Juliet story, but they don’t mention that Al-Fayed and Samira Khashoggi divorced after two years.
I’m going to have to start watching the Crown, aren’t I?
You won’t be sorry.
Same.
Jump ahead to season five and then go back to the other seasons. ETA: removing delightful teaser. Everyone needs to discover these episodes on their own.
You can start with Season 5 and not miss a beat.
I started watching last night so am only two episodes in, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I am taking a half day today so I can get through a few more episodes before my kids get home from school, LOL. So I’ll be through this one by noon lol.
So far I do feel like there is a different vibe than past seasons. Philip seems more….like a doddering pampered old man, like all he does is drive carriages every day (when he was still a FT royal until he was 95 years old and I imagine doing hundreds of engagements a year.) The Queen seems more spoiled and out of touch, like when she was demanding her yacht be fixed with government money.
I can’t make up my mind yet about where they are going with Charles. I saw a WaPo headline that this season is more sympathetic to Charles than Diana, but the thing is, I have always thought the Crown was sympathetic to Charles. They play into the thwarted love story between Charles and Camilla, they made his childhood seem cold, lonely and verging on traumatic at times, they portray his relationship with his parents as stunted and cold, with no real love there, etc. So even though he’s an ahole to Diana, there’s a part of you that understands it – he wants to be with Camilla bc she’s the one who loves him, and no one else has actually loved him before. She coddles him and he doesn’t think he’s been coddled before, etc. now we can discuss how much truth there is to that, but I think the Crown has been pretty generous to Charles overall. but there’s only so much Peter Morgan can do to help him.
This show walks an interesting line of being sympathetic but also exposing a lot. I guess the entire arc is that the Crown itself is what corrupts and why the people inside it are stupid, selfish, and cruel. So it has to play out not only in individual episodes but as the main story arc.
So I think everyone is going to look absolutely terrible, and then things will wind around and be more neutral by the end where he and Camilla marry.
Yeah, I agree its an interesting line. It humanizes these people but also shows you how dysfunctional the system is, how flawed the Windsors are as a family and as an institution, and there is going to be sympathy for that bc some of these people never really stood a chance.
This season is absolutely sympathetic to Charles. Diana is portrayed as some child woman without any gravitas, I felt. Charles was stupid to smear this and discredit it.
I’ve only watched the first episode so far and I agree they are not overly sympathetic to Diana. She comes across as a spoilt petulant child.
@Veda – Sympathetic to Charles on that front, yes, but they show him scheming against TQ from minute one. He savagely approached Major in the first episode trying to work the yacht situation to his own benefit.
Yes! coming here to say the same thing, gosh Diana is coming across and spoilt and immature! Really not what i was expecting at all.
If anything, the one being most damaged by the series so far is the Queen herself.
That was my take as well. It’s not that the writers distorted the truth for Charles, but they’ve made careful omissions. They tried to put the kindest spin possible on Charles’ behavior. It really rubbed me the wrong way.
And they left out so much about Diana’s life and work during the 90s. They barely touched on her charity work. They really couldn’t spare a single scene to cover her AIDS work or the fight to remove landmines? I felt they really did her a disservice, portraying her as shallow. The actress isn’t to blame. ED’s performance was excellent, but the writing for Diana was lackluster this season.
And did they expect us to sympathize with the Queen’s endless yacht saga? A tacky tale of a wealthy woman’s 5 year quest to get a country in recession to pay for her yacht to be refitted.
The Crown is the best piece of PR that Charles and Camilla will ever get in their entire LIVES, in the same way season 1 and 2 of The Crown was the best PR the Queen will ever got in her life. Peter Morgan is doing more to make these people look as good as they can, or at least as sympathetic as they can when they can’t look good, and Charles is mad abt it bc??? ??? ????????
Charles being mad abt it for this long actually did so much more to negate any positivity he’d have gotten from The Crown, tbh. Like, good job, dumb0-ss. You could have just shut up and profited off of lucking out enough to have Josh Charles AND Dominic West portray you on screen, but noooooo. He had to be a big f-cking baby abt it. FFs.
Right!?!!?
I mean I know Season 4 started to turn on Charles a bit, but there’s only so much Netflix can do to help him like I said lol. Overall the show is VERY sympathetic to Charles and he should have just kept his mouth shut about it.
What’s the saying? He should have sat there and ate his food? That’s exactly how he should have played this and he did not.
I’m on episode 6.
Episode 5 ends with a big fat love letter coda about how much the Princes Trust does for underprivileged youth and
(SMALL SPOILER ALERT!!!)
a few seconds of Charles dancing to Eric B & Rakim’s ” Don’t sweat the technique” that is utterly charming.
Dominic West makes even the tampon phone call seem playful (in an akward cringe way) and not gross, and throws buckets of charisma across every scene, *even while he’s whining unbearably!*
The real prince Charles WISHES this was a documentary!
I guess I’m weird, but I never found the tampon conversation all that bad. He never said he wanted to be a tampon. He said with his luck that instead of being a pair of knickers he’d be a tampon and get flushed.
@ElizabethPhillips the conversation itself isn’t actually that bad, if you ignore the fact that both are married, but anything that puts Tampax and Prince of Wales into the same headline is going to be embarrassing for the royals, and here its stuck with them for decades.
@Lurker25 I thought the bit about the Prince’s Trust was to emphasize what many of us on here have said for years now – Charles was a crap husband to Diana and a crap father and basically a garbage person in his personal life but he was a good prince of wales in many ways and he did actually care about his legacy via the duchy of Cornwall and the Prince’s Trust. There’s always been a duality there IMO. He’s good at the royal stuff but not the personal stuff.
Ok I went for a walk so I’m an hour behind LOL so just finished this episode. I LOVED it. I think it did an excellent job showcasing the racism
And classism in British society. Fayed wanted desperately to be accepted by the Queen and the royals and her racism just wouldn’t let her be a decent person to him at all. The way she left him Hanging at the race track was APPALLING.
He was of course racist himself, it shows there are tiers to this and his money could only get him so far.
The episode was a great way to slam the royals while introducing someone who’s going to be important later on.
People are rarely just one thing. Is he an awful person? Yes, in a great many ways. But he’s more complicated than just that too. I think they toe a fairly good line showing the good and the bad. Otherwise he’d essentially just be a one-note villain.
It makes William look pretty awful when they stated all the good that the Prince’s Trust did, and then William declined to participate because he wasn’t interested.It obviously wasn’t intentional because it happened well after the episode was made but it’s still kind of funny.
Yes, it’s the casual awfulness. The Charles/Diana story is gigantically dramatic, but what’s striking me more are all the tiny, almost throwaway, instances of dismissiveness, entitlement, cruelty.
And while I have no feeling for the real John Major in any way, I would gladly watch an entire series of JLM’s John Major reacting to the loony world of the RF.
JLM’s facial expressions in those reactions are delicious! All the performances are exquisite. The BRF is going to go through some things when this season wins all the awards (I especially would love to see the BAFTAS hand out some “gongs”).
Omg when the Queen is telling him that the government MUST pay for the Brittania….his face!!! I’ve never really had an opinion on JLM as an actor either way but he is SO GOOD in this role.
One of my favourite parts of the season was at the very end, where the Queen is flatly telling everyone of Tony Blairs HORRIBLE plan for restoring the Britannia. And Tony Blair’s suggestion that they rename the ship “New Britain” which just conveniently enough was also his campaign slogan.
And Charles in the background just brightly being like. “I think it’s a great idea!!!!!” Like wtf, dude, shut up, now is NOT THE TIME.
I watched this episode last night and it **was** striking how fully Morgan showed the racism within the BRF and British aristocracy. The scene in which, after Fayed and Johnson had so lovingly and at enormous expense restored the Duke of Windsor’s home and belongings, and after the Palace courtiers swooped in and confiscated everything, Mou Mou wasn’t bitter at all, but happy to have served the monarchy was heartbreaking. This season is amazing so far!
Many of the royalist critics are objecting to so much time and effort being devoted to the Al-Fayeds. They are like, why is this in there? Why a whole episode about “these people?” Now, we know why it’s there and also why the royalists object so strenuously.
It also showed, very poignantly but also very accurately, the exact sort of conflicted attitudes that so many people around the world, who were formerly colonized by the British empire, hold towards Britain and the British monarchy.
There is anger and frustration about the scale of the extraction of wealth, resources, labour from former colonies, all of which are the things that continue to give British people the standard of living they enjoy, up until now.
But there is equally as much a sense of both jealousy and longing, bc for the longest time, they WERE the standard that the world was aspiring and striving to. In many ways, they still are.
Mohammad al-Fayed in this episode captured that duality so well, I thought. That feeling of, this is what we need to aspire to and reach. You want to get on the same level as them, to prove you are just as good as them. But by wanting that and striving for that at all, you’re also conceding and sort of legitimizing the power and privilege they hold to set the standard and write the rules of the game. In which case, wouldn’t the most radical and revolutionary thing be refusing to play that game at all? To not seek credibility from this system and its establishment, bc by doing so, you’re accepting the status quo as is, and perhaps even entrenching it even further?
I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this. But I just really liked that episode. So much of the coverage of both Mohammed and Dodi in the media has been bad. Mohammed was always written about with this horrible sense of, “Oh look at this vulgar Egyptian billionaire haha isn’t he so tacky?” And Dodi, even now, is portrayed as nothing but the bored and idle rich son to his rich father. This episode gave him a depth that was badly needed and sorely lacking.
@A all your comments on this post are so dead on IMO. This episode is fascinating. It’s not meant to make anyone a saint, it’s showing a side of the royals and British society that some may want to hide, and it’s using Fayed to do it, which is just good storytelling IMO.
Yes, he restored it, but wouldn’t use the word ‘lovingly’.
In the show, he wanted to get ahead and those things he did were all part of that. Diana even joked about it with him. He was very dismissive of people himself. First Sidney and then Dodi’s girlfriend.
He was nice to people that could elevate his position. Example, he became nice with Sidney once he realized he had knowledge and experience he could use, but remained dismissive and rude to the ‘model’ that couldn’t really do much for him.
I do agree it was a good episode. Both because it’s an interesting story on its own and because it showed a lot about the royals.
I guess when I used the word “lovingly” I was thinking of Sidney Johnson in that part of the episode. Perhaps it’s part of the fiction/dramatization of The Crown, but while Fayed was quite clearly using Sidney because he had the knowledge and ability to help him climb the social ladder, it’s touching to see in the episode how close they grew over time. Very poignant at the end.
Thanks, C-Shell, I understand 🙂
I found it completely tragic how much Mohamed valued and went after acceptance by the idiotic Royals, only to lose Dodi in the end as a direct result of the circus that surrounded Diana. It’s a ‘be careful what you wish for’ lesson on steroids. Also, I had no idea that Dodi helped produce Chariots of Fire!
I was stunned by that. How have we never known more about Dodi??
OMG me too. that was my biggest surprise. I had NO IDEA
Yeah Dodi dabbled in film producing, this has always been known. Allegedly a large consumer of a sniffable powder in those days, at the time I thought he was a giant step down from Hasnat Khan (sp?).
Dabbled but being associated with Chariots of Fire is a huge deal.
Dodi probably would’ve been little more than a footnote in her life had his name not been inextricably linked with hers for all eternity. But I suppose he might have been the catalyst for her move to the US. We’ll never know.
Dodi’s fate was really just so sad but predictable given the father he had.
Al-Fayed was the definition of a social climber starting with his first marriage. He definitely “married up” when he married Samira Kashoggi so that he could be adjacent to power (thereby facilitating his later shady business from which he amassed his colossal wealth – people still don’t know how much he is worth now).
Samira on the other hand divorced him very quickly into their marriage and dedicated herself to advocating for the disenfranchised till the day she dies.
He pretty much then goes on to repeat the process with Heine his second wife whom he initially would not marry until she had birthed 3/4 (?) children from him so that he could “protect his wealth”. The rumour at the time was that he associated himself with her to again have access to white european society as she was a socialite from a moderately wealthy but very well connected family because of her parents business.
I have a completely different take on this. I’m only 3 episodes in but overall, I’m disappointed by those. The casting choices are bewildering to say the least. Dominic West is doing something, sure. But there is no line from Josh O’Connor’s Charles to this version. Even the accent is wildly off. Same with Philipp. What is happening?
This third episode was weird. It’s a good story on its own but do we need it in the realm of The Crown? By all accounts, Dodi was a playboy who dated Diana for a few weeks before her death. The Al Fayed’s family story is fascinating but you have 10 episodes here, why spend one on this? Make it a series, I would absolutely watch that! I googled a bit and Dodi’s mother was the aunt of Jamal Khashoggi??? Fascinating!
And Mohamed treated Sydney with respect once he knew who he was and what he could do for him. The first scene of them at The Ritz was so hard to watch. So apparently Mohamed is a flaming racist himself? Great. That made it really hard to like him even a little. I kept watching because the actors are excellent and compelling.
At the end of 3 episodes, I’m not sure I’m even supposed to like anyone except Diana.
I was watching the first two with my husband last night and he was like….why is Dominic West acting like Charles from the Windsors? (the netflix parody show). And he really is lol. Maybe that actor is a better charles than I had realized, lol.
In general, there is usually one episode that seems kind of random but is used to show a bigger point about the Windsors and their toxicity and dysfunction. Like it might not fit into the actual plot but Morgan is using it for something else. Like the Hereditary Principle from last season. It sounds like this episode is similar – that Morgan is taking a little detour to make a statement generally about the Windsors.
Agreed, Becks1.
I like that about the Crown. Many of the episodes start with scenes that leave you confused for a bit until the connection is made.
Examples:
The episode set in 1945 where allied forces dig up information directed to the location by a German (which turned out to be about Edward VIII’s connections to Nazi Germany).
A Greek nun struggling with money troubles (who is Philip’s mother).
A school in Wales where kids are learning a song (which is in Aberfan, just before the disaster).
I like this on principle but I think it’s too early in the season for that episode and all the other episodes all revealed something about a Windsor/Mountbatten figure. Philipp’s backstory was amazing. The Aberfan disaster was important because apparently it had a profound impact on the Queen and it revealed something about British society at the time. Maybe I just didn’t like the story or the people portrayed in it but it felt completely off. Or maybe it’s because this early in the season, I haven’t been able to make peace with the new actors so it was all too much. I hope it gets better. Jonny Lee Miller was the bright spot in episode 1, I pray they don’t underuse him. I always love it when the PM gets their first look behind the curtain and is completely disappointed and appalled. LOL
OMG, I loved “The Windsors.” So crass and funny (save for the bigoted depiction of travelers).
I don’t think we’re SUPPOSED to like Mohammed al Fayed. He was delusional to think he could buy his way into the English aristocracy. It was well-known that he was racist; he only accepted Sydney because he had worked for the Duke of Windsor.
Yes, exactly. You’re not supposed to like Mohammed al-Fayed, and you’re not supposed to like Dodi either. They are complicated human beings, whose many dualities and contradictions are being accurately portrayed. It’s true that Mohammed al-Fayed was shut out of the upper echelons of the British establishment bc of racism. It’s also true that he was racist to black people. Two things can be true at the same time.
Anti-blackness is a global problem ($10 and the Koh-i-noor diamond for anyone who can correctly guess who successfully exported that anti-blackness across the world), and Mohammed al-Fayed is not the first or the last non-black POC to be racist. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was also a victim of racism. If anything, it should demonstrate clearly to white people the absurdity of racism as a whole, and that this absurdity is built into it by design, purposefully, to prevent solidarity between black people and other POC.
Mohammed al-Fayed accepted Sydney bc, in the tradition of rich racists everywhere, he saw something in it for him. It’s no different to MAGA Trumpers cheering for Kanye, or fielding Herschel Walker as a candidate for the US Senate. Money and clout very conveniently don’t have a colour for a lot of racists. That shouldn’t be news to anyone.
Anyone who has read about him in the news these past 20+ years knows the man is … complicated. To say the least. Unlikeable. My question is, who am I supposed to like this season except Diana? Because you devote an entire episode to people who are kinda sh*tty, I need something to lighten the mood. It was a race to the bottom character-wise. Sydney was great but he died, unfortunately. Btw, what is it with this show and the foreshadowing cough? Jeez.
I’m sounding like I hate all of it. LOL I don’t. I’m just hoping for someone I can root for.
@Emmi, maybe the bottom line is that there are no winners here, not in such a rigid and stratified system of social hierarchy like the monarchy. Everyone who comes near it, or tries to come near it, loses. The people who eagerly buy into the BS it peddles wind up being distasteful. People who enter the institution and are heralded as potential harbringers of change either become disappointments who conform into cogs in the machinery (Kate), or they’re churned up and spit out and left traumatized (Meghan, Princess Margaret, Diana).
This is a system with no room in it for anyone to “win”, except the monarch, and even that isn’t really winning anything.
@Emmi LOL. I’m not sure if you are supposed to root for anyone. I think its supposed to be one of those things where they are all just horrible people but they’re caught in this toxic web (of their own making) and its just messy. I think in the beginning I was rooting for the Queen bc of how Claire Foy played her and how she was so naive and so manipulated and controlled. But at this point I’m not sure I’m rooting for anyone? I’m not even really rooting for Diana mainly bc we all know how that ends.
@Becks1: I guess not. But that’s a lot of negative energy for a whole 10 hours of show. Reminds me of Sons of Anarchy. Everyone raved about it but I couldn’t stand any of the characters, they were all terrible, awful people (and of course criminals). I didn’t care if someone died.
@Emmi – oh I know what you mean. There are some shows and movies like that for me, where at the end I’m like, meh, who cares, these people are all garbage, I can’t stand any of them. So I get the point about negative energy. It’s a lot of time to spend with garbage people.
Maybe because I only watched Season 4 and am now 3 episodes into Season 5, I don’t have a huge connection with previous actors and am loving what they’ve done.
The Mou Mou episode was one of the best so far…so touching and revealing. To me, it has everything to do with the Crown, from an outsider wanting in perspective. Everyone is flawed; people keep forgetting that that is human nature and the best stories have a flawed protagonist. Regardless of how he made his wealth, you feel for MAF because of his ambition and the fact that he keeps trying, even after multiple rejections. The last scene…for them to make you think the queen changed her mind and he finally gets what he wants, and then BAM! The best, ever. I was sad to find out that part was fictionalized.
I loved this Diana. I know some are upset she comes across as immature, but her unhappiness, her stunted development and her gossipy nature is on full display and makes her very relatable. She was not Mother Theresa (who in turn, was also not the Mother Theresa everyone knows). Thank God no one on the show is a hagiographer interested in spotlighting sainthood.
I found it hard to even like Diana.
It would have helped if they had shown her do more for her many causes as she did even when she felt terrible, instead of just looking sad so many times.
@Flowerlake I wonder whether Morgan has taken it as read that we know what Diana did for her causes and we know that while she was doing it she was going through hell in her private life. Her public life was so well documented at the time that we can see it all on Youtube or find out with a quick google. What Morgan is doing in the limited time available is to tell the story of the real people behind the job and to tell that story in clever ways like that superb interaction with El Fayad at the horse show when Diana was dumped on Mohamed because Elizabeth didn’t want to sit with him. I think that scene reveals an enormous amount and was excellent. Just my perceptions, of course, and after only one viewing.
I agree that Morgan’s best work in taking down the Windsors is setting up these moments when they encounter the ‘real world’ outside. Even last season Thatcher, as despicable as she is politically, appeared sympathetic in that Balmoral episode when you see through her eyes how absolutely provincial, insulated, & DOWNRIGHT WEIRD the Windsors are. It’s also the Windsor vs outsider scenes or episodes that throw into relief their misplaced sense of superiority.
I watched all episodes.
Wasn’t John Major complaining beforehand?
He came off as the nicest, most sane character of the season.
I enjoyed the season as a whole. The cameo from Timothy Dalton was appreciated, but I was bored with more Margaret doing the same old thing. Instead of another Margaret complaining to her sister episode, I would have liked more about other characters, like the Queen Mum. Don’t know why she hasn’t had a real storyline of her own since season 1. She was very popular in the 90s and would have liked to see something more about her childhood, the courtship by George VI etc.
I have also finished S5
Casting
Imelda Staunton is positively constipated (but maybe that was intentional)
Dominic West, while a complete arsehole IRL, is much too good looking to play Charles
Johnny-Lee Miller was my stand out fav
Pet peeve: Where was the dialect coach? The accents were so pedestrian. Especially Imelda Staunton
Overall, I think everybody came out looking bad (even Diana didn’t emerge unscathed) but I still think The RF got off lightly in this season. It even appeared (to me) to be almost sympathetic to Camilla 🫠 They should be counting their blessings and should stop complaining
This! I’ve watched the whole thing. Imelda Staunton isn’t able to do posh.
Dominic West is too virile. His energy is completely opposite to Charles and he isn’t able to capture his essence at all.
The accents were all horrific, they were a constant distraction.
My fave episode was Mou Mou, and I loved Sydney Johnson.
The royals were made to appear too sympathetic to me overall and Charles was portrayed so positively that I began to wonder if he had a hand in the production.
Diana was portrayed poorly, I thought. As self-centered. I did not like Debicki (sp?) as Diana. She felt like a poor imitation.
I actually had to fast forward through several Camilla parts. I was outraged that she was portrayed as blameless and almost heroic at times.
Overall, the worst season so far for me.
Hannah- I agree with your points on casting. West was not a good choice in my opinion. He comes off as too confident and masculine. Charles always has that underdog nerdiness /quirkiness that west is just to Alpha to have.
Casting for Diana is good -but they infantilized her a bit., and leaned in too heavily on her mannerism.
I agree about Dominic West and, to be honest, I’m not that sold on Debicki as Diana, either. It’s hard for me to not notice that she’s practically a full head taller than everyone else in the cast, especially when she’s wearing heels – then she’s about 6’6″. I suppose it could be a metaphor – “Diana looms large over the Royal Family.”
Imelda makes some interesting choices – she’s all frumpy and dowdy and out of touch, and then she’s gets this shrewd, calculating, hard-hearted look in her eyes – not at all the “lovely granny” Queen we became accustomed to in her later years.
I think the casting wasn’t great. I don’t buy West as Charles at all – if I wouldn’t know who he is supposed to be, I couldn’t tell. Debicki is better but also not convincing to me.
I’m really enjoying Imelda so far but I’ll report back when I’ve seen more episodes if my opinion changes.
Debicki is distracting to me bc of how she keeps ducking her head. I know Diana did that sometimes, but did she do that ALL the time??
West is not self-pitying and Eeyore-ish enough to capture Charles. Imagine, future King, pampered and privileged, and still thinking everyone is out to get you and a total victim. Plus, physically, you can’t ignore Charles’ ears as part of how he presents. West is just a poor choice. Surely there were loads of dweeby thespians who could have broken out in this role.
I do like the amount of humor they have sprinkled in with Diana’s lines, but Debecki is very thin and wispy whereas Di was a bigger physical presence so I struggle buying in with her. However, I’m really enjoying the Penny character, she’s got an interesting face.
I think Marcia Warren is ghastly as the Queen Mother.
Yes, ghastly is the right word. She doesn’t even come close to capturing her. Worse, she comes across as a batty lower middle class lady.
This – the QM was a round, cuddly lady (who underneath was as hard as nails). She also was apparently very charming. Watching her played by Marcia Warren as a skinny nagging whiner is odd to say the least.
The closest US equivalent is probably Barbara Bush’s grandmother routine which we now know also covered up a very tough lady.
The queen mother herself was ghastly: not merely tough, but racist and snobbish.
She does not work as the QM, not at all. So far that’s the casting I’m the most disappointed in. Maybe they should have gone with Judi Dench after all.
It’s like they delegated the Queen Mother’s casting to a sloppyass intern. The actress looks **NOTHING** like the QM.
It’s a TV show. Even if some events are true, there are so many holes filled in by writers to crank the drama. Why are people still talking like this completely factual?
Because the crown is a documentary, obviously.
Chefs kiss, Becks1! I hope you enjoy the season and half day. A documentary!
They have a bunch of visitors to Buckingham Palace and go out once a week and you think Prince Phillip didn’t have time to do a lot of carriage driving. He did nearly every weekend even the awful reporters say so. If I have a problem with something that’s not it. They’re choosing which relationships to spend time on. They are all pampered. Those hundreds of engagements are a lot of times fifteen minutes long.
I assume this is in response to my comment? Yes of course he had lots of time to do a lot of carriage driving, I’m not saying that. I understand they’re setting up the Penny-Philip storyline (not too subtle about it are they lol.) I’m saying its a clear switch in how Philip is being portrayed this season vs past seasons. But, I’m only two episodes in like I said, so I’ll have to see what happens.
Philip has been consistently portrayed as someone plunges into his interests. His fascination with the astronauts, with learning to fly, with women and partying and now with carriage driving.
Was I the only one worrying when reading that Sidney started working for the Duke at age 16, that this poor kid probably had to serve him in other ways as well?
The same thing occurred to me.
I wondered that as well.
The pedophile genes are strong in this family so… I’m thinking yes.
That did not occur to me until I read this comment. Given the proclivities of this family, from Louis Mountbatten to Andy Windsor, it is a real possibility.
While I’m aware that a work of art has a lot of license to compress or expand, so that a lot may be said/accomplished in a very limited time or space; and while the Crown does this very well because, of course, its telling a story that spans 100 years; I still believe it falls short in fleshing out charles, in particular.
To leave the impression that charles only cheated on his wife, whom-he-didnt love-and-was-forced-to-marry, with his “one true love” (barf) is such a misrepresentation of the truth.
I know theres enough info in the series to show charles’ weak, entitled, whiny, sleazy, all-around contemptible character, but to really tell the story of Diana’s life and what the windsors truly did to her, I believe we needed to see that charles really has no sense of loyalty whatsoever, by showing that camilla was in fact NOT his “one true love” but merely the only woman willing to enable and coddle his whiny, entitled ass……….”your greatest achievement is to love me” [barf/sick/vomit]
That tells you exactly how shallow his feelings were toward camilla. And why he treated his wife with such contempt. And why he was a serial philanderer. And why he blames his mother for everything
The same goes for Anne. She had multiple affairs but a tabloid got hold of her (incendiary) letters to Tim Lawrence and suddenly her husband’s illegitimate daughter hit the headlines and Tim became her one true love who consoled her after the devastating betrayal by her beloved husband.
It was basically a practice run (with lower stakes) for the way Charles and Camilla were presented to the public.
The Al-Fayeds used Diana as a way to bait the monarchy. Read up on Mohammed’s behavior after Diana’s death.
The scene with Mohammed and Diana was breathtaking – it was like I was watching Diana. Elizabeth was so natural – she was channeling.
The next episode is Charles focused and very sympathetic with the whole tampon call! I can’t believe he is complaining so much – yeah, he doesn’t come across perfect, but it’s not *that* bad.
They went super easy on Charles overall and really downplayed the call too. The portrayed Diana as very flawed and self-centered and Charles as a very smart, capable, self-aware man who was in a bad situation. And Camilla as a lovely, brave woman caught up in terrible circumstances vs the manipulative cow who terrorized and humiliated a naive teenager, her husband and selfishly exposed her children to ridicule. I really disliked this season and found it the weakest and most inaccurate.
The so called honey moon cruise appeared to be fiction. Wharf e was on the cruise as a security guard and wrote about diana avoiding Charles while he called camilla
I agree with everyone regarding Dominic west as Charles. The previous actor was brilliant in capturing his essence and west is the exact opposite. He’s too charming and charismatic to play Charles. The season did a hard left in becoming very sympathetic to Philip imo—
Sidney, John Major and Debicki capturing the pitch and intonation of Diana’s voice are standouts.
Can’t believe Al Fayed just let them have the furniture and artefacts. If the Queen had fronted it wd have made sense but not otherwise.
Absolutely batty casting of Phillip and queen mother.
So far, am bored of this absolutely shite family. They really are ghastly. Does anyone still look up to them? Accepting cash in bags, credibly alleged rapist, friends with paedos, total racists. Who wd want them as neighbours?
Movie on Sidney’ life please.
I agree with all of this. I am apalled at this grifter family; I’m sure they are actually much worse.
Just came in to say that 4 episodes in and “Mou Mou” is definitely the stand out episode for me.
The actor that plays the young Mohammed Al-Fayed was simply sublime – he completely captured the energy of the self-despising, social climbing wannabe and the hubris that would bring him one day.
Other stand out actors in this episode were older Al-Fayed and of course Sydney the Valet.
What I found interesting was Morgan did not hesitate to call out Al-Fayeds racism but never directly addresses why Edward ended up in Nassau/ Bahamas i.e. because he was a Nazzi or the Queen’s blatant racism towards Al-Fayed.
This episode really made the BRF look like the sad, insular, sniveling, small minded little racists they are. I hope they are hopping mad right now.
“Mou Mou” is my favorite episode thus far. I wish they’d gone a bit deeper into Sydney Johnson’s dismissal from the Simpson-Windsor household after 30+ years of work. Casually tossed-out. Awful.
I believe it was Wallis who dismissed him after Edward died. Maybe because she didn’t need a valet?
@Sue I believe Sydney was sacked because Wallace refused to let him leave at 4pm to care for his four children after his wife died.
Season 5 is kind of dull, this is the best episode I don’t know what Charles was carrying on about, he doesn’t come off that badly but the Queen does. She comes off as a boring ,living a very boring and regimented life, clueless and and ostrich who wants to stick her head in the sand instead of dealing with problems. Ugh, you can see why her kids are a mess, no one helps or talks to them, no one explains anything out side of duty to them. They are not fully formed people which would be especially important to the ones who are not going to sit on the throne, they all should been guided and encouraged to have lives.
I had to stop a few times to look things up and also discovered the Khashoggi connection. Very interesting episode.
I have to admit I cried when Sydney died.
They’re still making the Windsors, and especially Charles (and Camilla by extension) look way too good. I think I know why.
1) They have a hell of a time over there showing their royals as they really are, and even as they really WERE. They still massage the reputations of monsters with crowns who have been dead for hundreds of years.
2) If they showed the reality, it would be only unpleasant, depressing, and dull. The Windsors are the epitome of the banality of evil. One-dimensional people are not enjoyable to tell or to see/hear/read stories about.
I’m honestly having a hard time staying interested in this season so far. I’m not sure if it’s because I vaguely lived through this era so it’s nothing new, but I’m not finding it as captivating tv the same way I did with earlier seasons.
It’ not just you. It just seems dull.
West captures Charles speech and facial expressions and mannerisms but does not resemble him.
I think that one must be a person of color to fully understand and appreciate the significance of the ‘Mu Mu’ episode.
* correction: ‘Mou Mou’ episode
I thought Elizabeth (Diana ) was incredible in a couple of scenes I forgot it wasn’t Diana.
I thought the rest of the cast were kinda hit and miss . I just didn’t like this season casting compared to others .
Curious if anybody else feels the same ?
Or maybe I just built up so much anticipation for this season .
The third and fourth episode made me sad. Knowing that some of the key players were dead or would die made it poignant. That Margaret would never really be happy, the Queen dead, her mother too, Phillip, Diana and Dodi. So sad.
I’m glad I read the reviews of the Mou Mou episode here before I watched. It helped me appreciate the work of art that was the episode. And to see Dodi as a son, a human in his own right. Not just the lover who died as a plus one.
His dad must have been devastated .
Did the racism to Mohammed make anyone remember Meghan and how the BRF must have really felt when she joined them.