After a month-long organized hate campaign against Netflix and The Crown, I hoped that Prince Charles and his allies had finally punched themselves out. Sure, this past weekend, there were still hilariously unhinged articles about the poor, downtrodden Windsors and how they were being victimized by the ghost of Princess Diana, who clearly has a Netflix subscription. But I thought “well, maybe that’s the end of it.” But it was not. Over the weekend, a British peer named Lord Forsyth lost his damn mind about how The Crown is full of lies and how the British government needs to regulate Netflix so that people won’t believe that, you know, Prince Charles was a douche to Diana. Netflix also issued a statement, basically saying that critics can suck it, and they’re not going to add disclaimers to The Crown because everyone already knows that it’s a drama, not a documentary. Now Lord Forsyth is at it again.
A Conservative peer has accused Netflix of arrogance for refusing to put a fiction disclaimer on The Crown. Lord Forsyth of Drumlean today waded into the row between the Government and the streaming site over its portrayal of the Royal Family. The former cabinet minister said Netflix should be brought to heel by Ofcom to stop it airing ‘poisonous and mendacious’ content as fact.
At Lord’s question time today, Lord Forsyth said via video link: ‘Now that Netflix has arrogantly rejected the secretary of state’s excellent request to make clear at the start of every programme that The Crown is a work of fiction, what action does the Government propose to take to ensure that Netflix is regulated by Ofcom and is not free to present poisonous and mendacious material as fact?’
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport minister Baroness Barran said Mr Dowden had made his views ‘extremely clear’ about the latest series of The Crown.
Lady Barran said one positive outcome was that Netflix had made a statement in the public domain which acknowledged ‘this is indeed a fictionalised account’.
She added: ‘We are hopeful Netflix will reflect on this for future programmes to make sure that they serve their viewers to best effect.’
The hugely popular fourth season of The Crown started streaming on Netflix last month.
Baroness Barran sounds like she was rolling her eyes as she said that. It does sound like Prince Charles’ little hate campaign is winding down. It was good while it lasted, and he did his best. Not really. It was pretty obvious that he contacted the “old guard” – political allies and friendly royal commentators, all of whom consider themselves as the gatekeepers to royal power. It’s starting to really bother me that Charles really thought he could go to war with Netflix over a popular costume drama which – actually – worked to humanize the Windsors. Again, to paraphrase the Economist – if the royal family is actually in crisis because of a dramatization of royal history, then the Windsors have outlived their usefulness. If they had any to begin with.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Netflix.
They shouldn’t even be commenting on it. If it’s just a silly little show filled with dramatizations, why give it so much attention? And why draw so much extra attention to it by talking about it?!?!?
I know The Crown isn’t planning on going up to present day, but now I wish they would LOL.
I was thinking that too, is it called the Streisand Effect?
I’m mad that school children having enough to eat is a controversy. How about those peers go do their jobs and stop throwing tantrums about a rich white man being too emotionally fragile to deal with criticism over being horrible to his wife.
I really hope The Crown goes in on the Mark Bolland years.
This is just so ridiculous. They need to stop. People are still talking about the Crown because they wont shut up about it!
Frankly, I think The Crown itself offered an opportunity for us to sympathize with Charles’ position. The show clearly “suggests” that his feelings were ignored, and his actions controlled by rigid family expectations, basically for his entire life. He was portrayed as truly being in love with Camilla, and being denied the opportunity to pair up with her from the beginning is something we all can relate to sympathetically. For me, seeing their star-crossed love story play out helped me to accept and even appreciate Camilla for the first time. Previously, I only felt sympathy for Diana, which I still do—don’t get me wrong. Still, I think Charles would have gained something from the show, if not for all this “disclaimer” ridiculousness. As future king, he (and the BRF, and their friends/peers) would have been far better served not to have commented, period. Once again, they blew it.
How could they be star crossed lovers if Charles was sleeping with other women as well, like Lady Dale Tryon? Camilla married whom she wanted to marry which was Andrew Parker Bowles. The live story is PR after the fact.
@JT – I think that’s part of the point. The show is pushing the star-crossed lovers story, even if that wasn’t the reality. And while Charles was an ass to Diana in the show, we still see him as someone who wants out of his marriage, and is basically forced to stay in it, whose mother is way too invested in the marriage, etc. The royal family can screech all they want about the Crown but the truth is even in Season 4 the crown was pretty easy on the royals.
@JT – You are so correct. Camilla married the man she really wanted the first time around who was/is Andrew Parker-Bowles. I think she would have remained married to Andrew Parker-Bowles if he not wanted a divorce due to the nature of all the “illicit going ons” becoming 100% public knowledge. Andrew Parker-Bowles wanting to marry his long term mistress, which he indeed wanted to do, was only a secondary cause of the Parker-Bowles divorce.
Different people have different rules for relationships. If Camilla and Charles both agreed that fidelity was unnecessary, then that does not invalidate their relationship or their love. Lots of people believe in “monogam-ish”* relationships. Diana did not consent to this sort of arrangement. That is why his treatment of her was so horrible, not because of some narrow-minded definition of love.
It’s so ridiculous and clearly an attempt to get people to believe the while thing is lies. I was a teenager in the early 90’s. I remember the fallout from the marriage. It was far worse than anything The Crown put in. They didnt mention Charles’ paedophile mates, his other affairs, Tampongate etc. The only fictionalised part of the storyline about the sisters abandoned in the mental hospital and declared dead was the bit about Princess Margaret giving a damn about them. They are not scared of The Crown, they are scared that the interest in a fictionalised account of what happened will lead people to google, or to look I to what really happened.
I hadn’t watched any of The Crown before but I watched Season 4 to see what the fuss was all about. So, I have to think this strategy totally backfired on them. LOL. Stay mad, BRF!
Same, although I did watch a few episodes early on, not consecutively, and thought “nah.” But, then binged watched all of Season 4 after all the free press they got. Although the episodes without Diana, I watched still hoping for a glimpse of her story line. Like Dwight watching all of Wedding Crashers, instead of Grizzly Man, because you can’t underestimate the likelihood of a stealthy bear attack.
I haven’t started watching this season yet, but having Charles portrayed by Josh O’Connor is already making me more sympathetic to Charkes. So maybe he should just be quiet.
If my tinfoil tiara was affixed a bit tighter I’d think there’s a republican acting as a double agent within the palace to bring down the monarchy, because HOW IS IT ACTUALLY POSSIBLE that the royals continue to do the worst possible thing they could do, every single time? Every time! Yes Charles, throw a weeks-long temper tantrum about an effing tv show during a global pandemic, that’s the ticket, very Kingly! Sure, Cambridges, take the Covid Express on an expensive, totally useless, and actually dangerous tour, that’ll boost those popularity numbers!
Their entire PR strategy is so backwards it’s insane, and I think the problem here is that their staff actually believes their own hype. Same as celebrities who surround themselves with yes men and then wonder why they’re getting bad advice. They create their own echo chamber and with every reverberance they’re more untethered from reality. This will not end well.
I think you’re onto something! It’s poor Jason! Now the mystery of their insanely awful PR choices has been solved!
The House of Lords needs to be abolished as well as the Monarchy. Where was Lord Forsyth when the media was writing all those nasty and damaging stories about Meghan, a member of the Royal Family? If nothing, Charles’ and the British establishment’s reaction to the Crown has confirmed for me that the smear campaign against Meghan and Harry was sanctioned by the Royal Family and supported by the British establishment.
This! But that’s why I say the monarchy isn’t going anywhere as not only will it be complicated and not sure the country can handle another complicated divorce after Brexit, but lots of vested interests in maintaining the status quo. The monarchy going could threaten other institutions like the House of Lords. And where you have newspaper tycoons etc in the House of Lords they will ensure to use propaganda to protect their interests.
Seeing Clarence House close SM comments& all the minions sent out to complain about the portrayal of some royals in The Crown really brings home that the Firm had no issue with the press & social media nastiness directed at the Sussexes- even Archie. And the speed with which they got Downing Street to shift gears & endorse the train tour shows they could have similarly used their influence to shut down damaging stories but chose not to. But then the calls on the worse stories were coming from inside so..
Absolutely!
Wow, this whole thing reads like a Monty Python sketch. 😳😳😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😬😬
Sometimes I wonder if they are playing some weird long game to suppress Netflix in the UK because 1) They’re terrified of coming off even worse for season 5 and 6 which will show Diana’s death and how coldly the family reacted to it and 2) They don’t want the UK to get easy access to whatever Harry and Meghan put out because they know it will inevitably overshadow the entire family and they can’t stand the thought.
Not sure who “they” is but hat won’t happen.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha…..
Yeah we can ditch the peers along with the royals. They’re all well past their use-by date.
I felt the same until I started my current job (I’m a solicitor) and saw the benefit of having experts involved in the making of legislation, particularly scrutinising of it. I’m thinking of people like Tanni Grey-Thomson and Robert Winston but also people no one has heard of who excelled in their fields. It was the Lords that threw out (admittedly in the limited way they can) the ludicrous attempt by the ludicrous government to break international law.
This is not 100% connected to the topic. But it is an observation about The Crown and Princess Di. I was the same age as her and always thought she had a perfect figure. I was very focused on being thin and in shape in my youth. Now when I see how thin she actually was, I am shocked. At the time, I didn’t see it AT ALL and just wanted to be like her. And similarly, how very thin I was. Do I have a point? Not really. It is just weird how perception can change.
The more fuss they make, the more people and journalists will research and write the truth and that might be more damaging in the long run.
The monarchy isn’t useful, and I can’t believe the British people are taxed over 49 million pounds a year for it.