The return of 'The Crown'

Just as the Royal Family are back in the headlines, The Crown is back on Netflix. Perfect timing.

The Crown, now in its third season, has been one of the best TV dramas in years. The reasons are obvious. First, the casting. Claire Foy and Matt Smith as the young Elizabeth and Philip, obviously. But everywhere the performances in seasons one and two were strong: Alex Jennings, brilliant as Edward VIII, Jared Harris, John Lithgow and Jeremy Northam outstanding as George VI, Churchill and Eden, a terrific breakthrough performance by Vanessa Kirby as Margaret, and everywhere there were fine cameos: Stephen Dillane as Graham Sutherland, Ronald Pickup as the oily Archbishop of Canterbury, Eileen Atkins as Queen Mary and many, many more.

Second, Peter Morgan’s conception, and the quality of his writing. He used Churchill, Edward VIII and George VI, in particular, to create a deep background going back to the Thirties and Forties. Morgan (who wrote 18 of the first 20 episodes) filled the first two seasons with fascinating minor characters: Cecil Beaton and Tommy Lascelles, Billy Graham and “Porchey” Porchester. 1950s Britain has never looked like this before, posh high society rather than angry young men in duffle coats.

The big stories were there: the Abdication Crisis and Suez, royal weddings and George VI’s funeral, the Queen’s relationships with her first prime ministers, Churchill, Eden and MacMillan, in particular. But even more interesting were the quirky smaller stories, all hugely revealing: Sutherland painting Churchill’s portrait, the rivalries between Churchill and Eden, Elizabeth and Margaret, Edward VIII’s collaboration with the Nazis. As in Downton Abbey Morgan kept his focus on the people downstairs, in this case the civil servants and private secretaries, as much as the upstairs world of the Royals. Lascelles, Charteris, Jock Colville and Michael Adeane became fascinating characters in their own right.

Throughout both series, Morgan did a brilliant balancing act between the high and the low, pageantry, pomp and circumstance but also numerous affairs and scandals among the young royals. Above all, perhaps, the executives resisted the temptation to make it too American. Just John Lithgow as Churchill, brief appearances by the Kennedys and Billy Graham, an episode about a possible state visit by Eisenhower.

Could season three, with a brand-new cast, be as good? Big names like Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Colman, Charles Dance (as Mountbatten) and Derek Jacobi (as the Duke of Windsor) whetted the appetite; there would be new politicians, Wilson and Heath, Tony Benn and Barbara Castle.

These turned out to be the first big problems. After Suez and the Abdication, Harold Wilson talking about devaluing the pound sounds very small beer. The Sixties was about social change not big political dramas.

More serious, is the casting. Waiting for the new cast is like waiting for a new actor to play Dr Who — and this cast is more Colin Baker than David Tennant. Olivia Colman, Tobias Menzies and Helen Bonham Carter don’t look or sound like the Queen, Philip or Margaret. Samuel West is nothing like Blunt and doesn’t compare with Alex Jennings’s stiffer, darker, more feline portrayal in Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution.

Season three starts cleverly, jumping from Profumo and Home to the 1964 election, the death of Churchill and revelations about Sir Anthony Blunt and the KGB. The script is knowing. In-jokes about Wilson not wanting to devalue the pound, clever word-play about espionage, art and deceit. The big mistake, though, was to underplay Churchill’s death and funeral. It was one of the great events of the Sixties, but Morgan fails to do it justice. The funeral looks cheap and small compared to the great set pieces in the first two seasons. Jason Watkins is good as Wilson, but Wilson was no Churchill.

Not only is there no big bang opening, there is none of the thick dramatic texture of the first two series. Where are the below stairs machinations of Lascelles and Jock Colville? No affairs (yet). The young royals are too young to be interesting; the old royals (George VI, Queen Mary) are dead. Who really cares what Prince Philip had to say about Anthony Blunt and the KGB, or anything else?

Indeed, Morgan’s fascination with the Queen’s relationships with her PMs doesn’t help him get a grip on the Sixties. How new and radical were the Sixties? Historians, like Dominic Sandbrook, have shot down the old myths. Wherever the action in the Swinging Sixties was, it wasn’t in Buckingham Palace or Downing Street. Perhaps it wasn’t in Britain at all. 1960s Britain was always a sideshow to the big dramas in America: Civil Rights and Vietnam, JFK, Nixon and Martin Luther King, Woodstock and Altamont.

Perhaps Morgan should have been more radical and just cut to Diana and Thatcher, the Falklands and the miners’ strike. Or perhaps this damp squib opening tells us more about Britain in the Sixties than a thousand TV programmes about Grosvenor Square could ever manage.