The Crown season 6, part 1 review: The show puts all its eggs in Diana’s basket
The Netflix series still boasts incredible performances and production value, but unfortunately has nothing new to say
TV Reviews Diana
Well, here we are, at the beginning of the end. When we all started watching Peter Morgan’s The Crown in 2016, wasn’t the anticipation of this moment in the back of our minds? The tragic death of Princess Diana? If you’re a viewer over 30, Diana is likely the royal who has loomed largest in your conscious, in life and in death.
The Crown knows this. In real life, Diana sucked up all the oxygen in the royal room, and on the show, she has taken more and more of the focus since she first appeared onscreen in season three (first played by Emma Corrin, now Elizabeth Debicki). Unfortunately, that’s been to the show’s detriment.
The back half of season five depicted Charles (Dominic West) and Diana’s divorce drama ad nauseam. There were poignant moments, but at a certain point, you’re beating a dead horse. By the time the finale rolled around, it felt clear that the show no longer knew what to do with Diana. This was a time when she was dazzling the world with her charm, but all you ever saw on The Crown was her being chased by paparazzi and moping around her flat.
Alas, the first four episodes of season six (dropping on Netflix November 16, with the six episodes in part two premiering December 14) do not improve on this trend. Taking place over the last eight weeks of her life and a few days after her death, The Crown cannot bear to look away from Diana. Diana on yachts, Diana on planes, Diana getting photographed, Diana being a warm and involved mother, and … Diana entering a tepid relationship with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla). Debicki is, once again, a total marvel. Every gesture, every glance is an embodiment of Princess Di. You could watch her stare longingly into space for hours, and that’s what The Crown is counting on.
What has long separated the Netflix drama from every other TV movie depicting the royals—aside from stunning performances and production value—was a keen sense of storytelling and willingness to veer into unexpected territory. It has built out a robust world by bringing background characters into the spotlight and drawing connections between the royal drama and everyday people and world events alike. Those interesting choices are almost completely absent in the first part of season six, with the exception of two different photographers serving as a framing device for episode two (not coincidentally the standout).
In the brief moments that attention isn’t on Diana, we’re rehashing the same old stuff: Charles petulantly demanding legitimacy for Camilla (Olivia Williams); Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) sighing about Charles and Diana’s antics; Margaret (Lesley Manville) raising her eyebrows knowingly. If you thought Diana and Dodi’s courtship was going to be “a love for the ages,” as Dodi’s father Mohamed (Salim Daw) calls it, the level to which you’ll be underwhelmed is deliberately shocking. Though West still doesn’t capture the pathetic presence of Charles, he can range from infuriating temper tantrums (“This is war! Only total victory will do!”) to immediate grief at Diana’s death quite well. There’s also more of a focus on William (Rufus Kampa) and Harry (Fflyn Edwards), who will no doubt have bigger roles to play in part two, but come across as mere props here.
There is dramatic irony, of course, across the slow march to Diana’s death. The season actually opens on the crash before flashing back to eight weeks earlier, in case there was one person in the world who didn’t know where this was headed. With every tense paparazzi chase or declaration from Diana that she’s about to make changes in her life (she has an on-the-nose phone conversation with a therapist about working to wean herself from her addiction to drama), we can feel how we’re drawing closer to the inevitable conclusion. Perhaps The Crown means for it to feel like a noose tightening, but it watches like a very pretty bore.
It seems likely that the second half of the season will be more interesting. If Diana was the center of gravity, where will everyone fall in her absence? The Crown is ultimately an Elizabethan drama, dedicated to telling a story about sacrifice of self in the face of duty, a feat Diana was unwilling and unable to accomplish. After her death, will the show be able stick the landing by refocusing its lens on what made it interesting to begin with?
The Crown season 6, part 1 premieres November 16 on Netflix
54 Comments
Princess Di’s death is so tragic. Nothing evil or pathetic about an old lady dying as she leaves a night club just because she ordered her driver to drive like a maniac with zero regard for the lives of other “common” people on the road.
By the time the finale rolled around, it felt clear that the show no longer knew what to do with Diana. SPOILER ALERT:Don’t worry, the Royal family fixed that…
So…it isn’t on my Netflix. Seriously.Thursday November 16th at 3am ET is the release time listed in many places. There is no evidence of season six at all on my Netflix. No coming soon or notifications. Nothing.What the fuck?ETA: 9am and here it is. Just in time to make me look crazy. Again.
Better binge. Netflix isn’t generally available in federal prison.
Elizabeth dies in the end.
I really thought she was going to bury us all.Personally.
Charles for the next 25 years
it’s a more accurate portrayal than Adam West who does its best but is entirely too charismatic.
Prince Batman???
Batman has nothing to do with this.
That thumbnail image of the Netflix trailer above — it reminds me of something I diskliked about the previous season. While I know Elizabeth Debecki gets raves for her portrayal, I think she WAY overplays the eyes. She does that head-slightly-down, eyes-slightly-up thing in virtually every scene. It got super annoying to watch and felt like a crutch.
I haven’t seen so much as a trailer for this and that was my immediate reaction to that still. I know there were well-circulated photos of her with that look but she wasn’t like that all the time.
Like Elizabeth Taylor on 30 Rock?
Still not reaching the levels of this tic Matt Smith achieved in seasons 1-2. I think it’s a thing tall people do to seem less tall.
While I know Elizabeth Debecki gets raves for her portrayal,she looks like she could dunk on Shaq.
That was a physical affectation that the real Diana had, but the thing about Debicki doing it is that she has the HUGE eyes that make it seem so much more pronounced when she does it.
Debicki I think is great as Diana (I’ll cop to being biased, as Debicki is one of my favorite actors).
The problem is…Diana. I hate saying this, but I just find Diana the person, or at least, the person who was portrayed in media, to be terribly boring. And maybe this is the flaw of the portrayals, because none of the attempts to portray her on screen, for me, have succeeded in transcending the idea of Diana. Or were willing to try.
The Crown comes the closest, and in a handful of moments from season 5, when it dares to show Diana as a selfish twit, scoping out doctors while a friend is fretting over the health of a loved one, or when she lists the litany of astrologers and aroma therapists she counts as intimates. But these are only glancing attempts. Diana remain a symbol of…something? I’m not even sure what. What does she represent? Love lost? The pitfalls of aspiration? The dying of the aristocracy?
I don’t really get it either. I feel for anyone who is in pain, but I just don’t buy 98% of her supposed struggles. Oh she couldn’t divorce sooner because of what society would think? Who cares what they think, truly? She still would have been massively wealthy and well-regarded She had tremendous charisma but tbh I don’t see her as a tragic heroine.
And callous though this is to say, the circumstances of her death trouble me. She didn’t die in a plane crash, or a shipwreck. She didn’t die from substance misuse or an assassin’s bullet. She was in a car being driven recklessly, endangering others, for the purpose of evading photogs, and ultimately, she died because she didn’t buckle her seatbelt. I found less tragedy in that end, than I found much that was needless and pointless. The doctors said if she’d worn her seatbelt she’d have walked away with some cuts and bruises.
“Diana’s death was problematic actually” is such a stark, contrary, self righteous 2023 millennial comment that it actually made me burst out laughing.
Yep I remember some medical official saying he was about 92 percent confident that with a seatbelt on she’d have lived. I mean maybe not in the best condition, but I’m sure the public would love her even more or something for living with a disability or whatever. I just cannot believe she is British Jesus to this day.
super-privileged people are also sad and also have mental health issues. (and that doesn’t make them less privileged). Mental health issues (in the broader sense) are usually impossible to understand from the outside. Still the show gives pretty convincing causes for these issues.
She couldn’t divorce sooner because of who she married, not what “society would think”. The Church of England frowned on divorce, and she and Charles couldn’t divorce until the Queen gave the okay, as the monarch is the Head of the Church.
I fucking hate the cult of Diana. She probably wasn’t a bad person and the whole thing hugging people with AIDs was a genuinely important moment. But Jesus Christ when she died the reaction felt like closer to 9/11 for some people and the fact she’s still popular despite being dead for 25 plus years when plenty more important people have died since just irks me to no end. The last ww1 vet dying is a mere footnote to her farewell.
I don’t know if the show will get into this in anyway, but I think there is something to be said that she – like many people – is more of a myth *because* she died. Her death hangs heavy over the show (and the real royal family) because nothing can really ever tarnish her image. Had she lived, had she stayed with Dodi, had she been there during Megxit (assuming that even happened), had she had more of a hold on William, the entire perception of her, the boys and Charles could be entirely different.
Relevant Mitchell and Webb:
My mother, an American who had never previously openly showed any interest in Diana or the British royals, fucking lost her damn mind when Diana died. Like bought magnets to display on the fridge and other kinds of weird shit. I found Diana’s death sad, but the mass hysteria just fucking grossed me out.
With the disclaimer that I’ve still not made it through S5 yet, this catches many of my concerns that stemmed from her portrayal at the end of S4.Morgan did such a spectacular job on The Queen that I can only think there was a deliberate decision to go away from the contrast he made in it between the public Diana and the private one, who was often a piece of work.Diana at 18 was someone who got in – somewhat unfairly – way over her head, and it’s hard to hold her accountable for that. Diana at 30, though, was creating a swath of destruction all around her without much concern for anyone (including the Princes) – except what had been entirely unanticipated, which is that she had this absolute natural talent at PR.Morgan had the almost unique opportunity to really focus in on this dichotomy of the two both from clearly being aware of it as well as having the track record of the show so that he wouldn’t have been pilloried for it, but he chose the easier soap opera path.It’s a shame. Comparing the selfish twit in private with the public image she worked so hard on could have been a really compelling spine of the story in S5 and S6. Doesn’t sound like that’s the case.
Christopher Hitchens used to refer to Diana as a “vapid disco queen”. Her activism on AIDS, while admirable, was a direct result of her time with the fashion houses of Milan and the euro-disco scene. Her friends from that world were dying and she wanted to help. It was not from her deep compassion for all humanity. Similarly, her activism on kids dying from landmines isn’t exactly an emotional stretch for a young mother, nor was it controversial. She wasn’t crafting white papers and giving monumental speeches to parliaments & legislatures world-wide: she was a continuous photo-op.Ultimately, she was a cipher. Some people love to think of themselves as royalty, and so decided to make Diana their hero. Some people envision themselves as do-gooders, and so they view her helping her dance party friends as the height of virtue. When all we really know about someone is what we see in photographs, we write our own story about them.
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head. Diana is this sort of blank slate upon which people can project what they want. And maybe Diana’s brilliance was she realized this? Though even that amount of self awareness may give her too much credit. Remember, this is someone who failed to pass her O-levels – twice – and then went to finishing school in Switzerland. The only job she ever had was as a nanny. As another poster noted, at the age of 18, this is a pitiable situation, and I feel bad for her. But then she enters her thirties, and for me the pity, and the interest ends, when it becomes clear that her world involves alternately courting and shunning the spotlight as it suits her. One can see where Prince Harry got his methods from.
Plus the whole “Cinderella story” narrative completely fails to hold up to any scrutiny (and has always pissed me off). She was fucking nobility. It wasn’t like Charles married some poor girl who grew up in a council flat and who was having to work multiple low-paying customer service jobs to make ends meet. She may not have been from the most noble or richest family, but according to all standards, then and now, she was far better off than most other Britons. FROM BIRTH. (Like she was high born enough that she and Charles actually did have some very distant common ancestors.)
all those people are terribly boring in real life. this show is doing its best to make things a little more exciting I think.
The thing is, Queen Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret are so very fascinating, and the early seasons were compelling because they followed this pair so closely. But then the Queen’s kids come along, and the series really ceases to be The Queen, and becomes The Windsors, and the Windsors would tie for first in the Upperclass Twit of the Year Competition.
But I get that. It’s about the crown. To do that story justice across so many years, you’d likely want to get into those who will inherit that same crown once they enter the picture. I think it makes sense for there to be a heavy focus on Charles (the future crown for the show and the current crown now) and William (the heir presumptive). After all, when the show started, it also focused some on George before he died.
I feel like the show wants to both demean her as a trashy idiot, the better to engage in Windsor apologia, and show her as a sort of eidolon of emotional purity and sensual vitality to be crushed symbolically by the weight of responsibility (responsibility which, to be clear, is entirely made up). It’s a jumble of ideas that is gross and weird, to the point that even Charles himself was pretty openly critical of how they depicted her, and the show comes down so hard on Charles’ side it’s practically in his pocket.So far as Diana’s cult of personality, it boils down entirely to:HotRichTragic deathIf Lady Di were alive today, she’d just be another horrible old rich person with a nazi uncle, engaging in endless scandals that British taxpayers finance, and nobody at all would care about her. But she bit it young and had great hair, so my mother in law paid 60 bucks for a commemorative teacup with her face on it.
Well at least they should know what to do next;King Charles spending 100 million £ for a coronation while the UK has record food bank usage (but hey, they “took back control” with Brexit, right?).
Record food banks and Brexit are not the King’s fault. That’s the cost of the rise of white nationalism in Europe and America. They voted for Brexit and Johnson, and then paid 10x more with the succession of horrible conservative PM’s.
Lmfao. No. Austerity is the main cause in the horrendous rise of foodbanks and that was very much a Cameron/Osborne neoliberal project. Now the second order effects was certainly a rise in pro-Brexit sentiment but they should be considered as separate but related.
Record food banks are not the king’s fault, but spending huge amounts of public money on a party to celebrate his elevation to a meaningless position certainly was.
From a dramatic standpoint, the show has also had to grapple with Charles’s transformation from extremely sympathetic young man who is awkward and struggling with parents he has a cold relationship with (beautifully played by Josh O’Connor) and transition him into a cold, rude, probably abusive, very unliked adult man. There seems to be some reality to that assessment of Charles, but I think what hurts the Diana stuff even more is that we were so sympathetic to Charles for so long and then we had to be reminded of history.
I don’t get it. I know it’s a generational thing, and YES, I remember when she died and all that, but why are we still hearing about this woman decades later? I just don’t get the big deal. I don’t see or hear anything that f-ing magical in any interviews that would warrant this much attention this much later. Jesus.
I thought S5 was far below the level of quality established by earlier season, but this honestly went so hard. I was crying like a baby, much sadder than when she actually died. I’d never liked Debicki in anything I’ve seen her but she fully converted me here.
What this season got right: The gut-wrenching impact of Diana’s death. It still hits hard.Everything else, not so much: The cartoonish Arab stereotyping of the Fayeds was often cringe inducing. And just the Diana of it all. She was a fascinating figure to watch from afar. Gorgeous. Poised. Compassionate. But in reality, she didn’t come off as an exciting person to be around. To focus 3 entire episodes on her moping was a recipe for boredom.
I bet we see her in a lot of scenes where she or a member of the cast are sitting down, on apple boxes, or are really taller than average. Although the real Diana at 5’10” was quite tall, Elisabeth Debicki is a strapping 6’2″.
I don’t know what happened in real life but it seems like the first three episodes event are so heavily foreshadowing that even an hollywood writer would have found it too much. particularly the last moments. It’s still touching but I entirely agree that the strength of the early seasons are how the royal events relate to common folks and world events at large. My favorite episode is about the mine collapsing on a school; the fog episode was good as well. I was young when Dianna died and didn’t know (and cared) for the details so I’m “learning” a few things here but even at the times it seemed entirely too much.
I was in my late teens. It was… a lot. At the time, I found the mass hysteria entirely disgusting. Like my response to seeing her death on the news (which I saw the night she died because I was up late watching TV) was like, “Oh shit. That sucks.” My mother, on the other hand, who had never shown any noticeable interest in Diana or the royal family (she was American), suddenly acted as if she’d just lost her very best friend. She bought Diana death merch that she displayed in the house. It was fucking absurd.And a lot of that has informed how I’ve watched the Diana seasons of The Crown. I wasn’t looking forward to this part, not because I care about Diana but because I remember the overblown ridiculousness of the response to her death. I will admit that the show made me slightly more sympathetic towards her, but when I cried in the episode showing the aftermath of her death, I was crying for the characters who had lost their loved ones, including Dodi’s father, not for the loss of Diana, which… meh.
Spoilers, I guess . . . I found parts of the fourth episode quite moving but the “talking to dead people” moments were odd. The scene between the Fayeds was well acted and made emotional sense – in his grief, he’s questioning the pressure he put on his son but he can’t help but focus on his own feelings. The Charles/Diana scene was weirdly flirty. The Elizabeth/Diana scene had nothing to do with their relationship on the show, where Elizabeth regarded her with a mixture of irritation and sympathy. Surely the more daring angle would have been a Diana/Camilla scene?
I was really hoping she’d survive
I have to say if I was Diana and conned into a bullshit marriage, and then treated like shit for years, I’d burn the mother fucker to the ground and more when I got out. Saying she stayed in the marriage when she could have gotten out is laughable. She married into the Royal Family, not your next door neighbors. People loved her because she showed compassion to the common people, to victims of AIDS when it was unheard of . They loved her because they felt bad for the way she was treated by the RF. Maybe a lot of you weren’t old enough to know what was going on back in the 80s and 90s, but she really did do a lot of good. Yes the fairy tale she and the public were sold as far as marrying her Prince and living happily ever after was just that, a fairy tale. But in an opening scene of the first episode, the Queen tells Charles “two happy marriages were destroyed”. JFC Liz. Take you head out of your ass for once. Happy?? Your son cheated on Diana the night before their wedding. And continued to do so for years. Your people planted terrible stories about her in the press because she was so popular and you all hated being second fiddle to her. I’d say Morgan has gone easy on all of you. He knows who the public loved, and it wasn’t you and your son.
I recommend everyone read the Guardian review if you want to laugh. It described Diana showing up post mortem as a “force ghost” and oh my lord.
I love how the “Family” is constantly after everyone in it to “sacrifice self” for the good of the Firm but then no one in the Firm ever does – except MAYBE the late Queen. But considering it was hers to command, that is on her too.
This half season reinforces what I said after S5 ended: the season should have started with Diana’s death and the immediate aftermath.They got close to it. I actually liked starting the season with the accident. But instead of flashing back to the past few months of her life, maybe just flash back to the day before at Balmoral to see how William, Harry, Charles, and the rest are doing only to show them being awakened the next day with the news of the death. The way the episode after the accident focused on how it affected them was what I think was more important. I wish we’d been able to spend more time with that. The show is The Crown. Focus on how this is affecting the queen and the heirs to the throne.