The Crown: Netflix’s Flamboyant Spectacle, A Series Overview
Netflix’s historical drama ‘The Crown’ is about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the British Royal Family. The show deals with political and sovereign related events in the United Kingdom and has a time frame for all of its seasons with different actors playing the same roles every two seasons.
The first two seasons were about how the Queen was throned and how the younger Elizabeth dealt with her family and the country as the new queen. Claire Foy portrayed the Queen alongside Matt Smith as Prince Philip. It features episodes based on historical events, family happenings and shows the global political landscape being changed since the 1950s.
Season three and four had different portrayals of the Queen and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip with introducing them as parents and also a new cast including their children. Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies portray the Queen and Prince Philip respectively. Prince of Wales Charles has also been given a lead in the storyline, Josh O’ Connor plays him. Both the seasons offered episodic features of family drama, politics and historical occurrences.
If you want a digest of the Royal Family of Britain, The Crown is not the best thing out there for you. Netflix’s show provides us with a drama of such a unique story yet which has been told a thousand times from different perspectives and publications and on different platforms, ‘The Crown’ particularly stands out because of its undeniably beautiful quality of work such as detail, production and casting.
Although the series has been criticised for being inaccurate, it never tells us the wrong things. The showrunners try to present a character written by them for the ordinary audience who haven't heard The Royal Family’s voices rather than their speeches and public events. The writers offer us an insight that may be inaccurate but tell the gist of what happened; a lot of things weren't documented so speculation based on what was available to them was necessary to present a show like this.
Regarding the performances, they have been brilliant. The acting combined with the prestigious locations for filming, the rich production quality and beautiful writing makes it almost perfect. Ranking the seasons, the latest one; season four which has the stories of the Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana with Gillain Anderson and Emma Corrin playing them respectively particularly stands out because of those two, the characters and the actors' portrayals.
Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham Carter both as Princess Margaret are brilliant in their performances. Each depiction is spectacular in its way. The music is sometimes too good for the scenes, it suits the emotions the episodes tell us, it suits the character and their situations so does the cinematography. Still considering all of the parts were good, seasons three and four are better because of oversight of the previous two seasons.
The Crown has two more seasons on its way with a new cast and is looking good considering the level of effort Netflix has been putting on the show for five years and counting. They did decide to make it only one season for the final act but later switched to the original idea which included six seasons.
The Crown is one of Netflix’s best and probably one of the best period dramas of all time. Overall it is absolutely a worth watch not just to know about the Royal Family but the drama and the flamboyance which makes up for its mistakes.
