The Crown season three: What side is Peter Morgan on?

I was cautiously looking forward to the third season of The Crown. I felt guilty for not getting into the first season more, and the second one didn't really hit home with me either. Nevertheless, I acknowledged that it was well-made and well acted. This time around, with no favourite series featuring fantastic villains to compete, I felt that I was finally ready to appreciate it as much as period drama fans generally seem to do.

Sadly not, though. The series still has the same strengths and weaknesses as in previous seasons. On the plus side, the acting's still great (mostly). Olivia Colman doesn't convince quite as much as Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth; you never really buy that she's supposed to be a bit of a cold fish, as her face is too expressive. Nevertheless, she gives a good performance as always. I preferred Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip to Matt Smith's version: Smith's boyishness, which is charming when he plays the Doctor, grated rather when he was Philip, especially in season two. Menzies is a bit stiff, but has great rapport with Colman and other co-actors. While it felt unnecessary to recast the roles of Lord Mountbatten and the Duke of Windsor, seeing as Greg Wise and Alex Jennings did such a good job of them and could easily have been aged up just a bit more, the advantage was that we got to see Charles Dance and Derek Jacobi on screen. Jane Lapotaire was spectacular as Philip's mother, a put-upon, chainsmoking nun. Also, the production values are impressive, and the series still feels like a quality product. On the minus side, the pacing was still slow, and there wasn't much going on in each episode. Some of the events highlighted deserved the attention they got, while others didn't.

However, this time around something else bugged me that hadn't before. Back in season one, I'd assumed Peter Morgan's project was about understanding both the Queen and the British monarchy better. It didn't have to be a ringing endorsement by any means, but I saw it as an earnest endeavour to find out the inner workings of the monarchy and what it must be like to be its figurehead. I thought we were supposed to see things from the Queen's point of view, as in Morgan's film The Queen. That's not to say it should go unchallenged, but I expected the base note of the series, so to speak, to be sympathy with the Queen.

This is what I thought we got in season one, which I even claimed was good PR for the royals. In season two, after I read an article where Peter Morgan showed republican leanings, doubt set in. By now, and after having heard some more choice quotes from Morgan about the Queen and the monarchy (admittedly, from a hostile source) I'm starting to wonder if The Crown is in fact a Trojan horse of a series. It attracts largely pro-royal viewers with the promise of making a believable drama out of Queen Elizabeth's home life, then starts to feed them the message that the monarchy, to which she's devoted her life, isn't really worth it. Maybe those early instances in the series of the Queen putting duty before her own wishes weren't explorations of ethical dilemmas at all but part of a bigger pattern, which is supposed to show us how the Crown demands far too much of its bearer. We seem to be getting the "poor little royals" argument for abolishing the monarchy again and again: look how the members of the royal family have to sacrifice who they really are, and how miserable it makes them. Wouldn't they be happier living an "ordinary" life?

Now, it's not as if I were an ardent monarchist myself, though I happen to think that the Swedish and the British royals are (for the most part) doing a good job. In principle, there's not much to be said for monarchy, and if Morgan wants to get rid of it, that's a perfectly respectable opinion. However, if the purpose of The Crown was to show us how worthless said crown is, then it hasn't been playing fair. Whether monarchist or republican, one doesn't want to be made a fool of. Anyway, the "poor little royals" argument doesn't cut much ice with me as it's possible, if difficult, for a royal to opt out of the whole thing. They seldom choose to do so, however. Hmmm, wonder why.

This royal rant has left me little time to get into the specifics of season three. I enjoyed the two first episodes - especially the second one, where Princess Margaret (a hilarious Helena Bonham Carter) charms President Johnson. Episode three was "Aberfan" and can't be called enjoyable, but it did pack a punch and had something interesting to say about why we shy away from the grief-stricken (because we think we'd be rubbish at comforting them) and why we shouldn't stay away (because even if we don't have much to say, showing up is a help). Whether it was entirely ethical to highlight these dilemmas on the back of an actual tragedy is another matter. Episode four brought us Lapotaire, but one of the plot lines - about how poorly received a documentary about the royal family was - was, according to one review I read, a complete invention. A journalist called John Armstrong plays an important part in the episode, but apparently there was no such person. Learning this shook me and made me question whether Morgan actually knows what he's doing. If the documentary wasn't poorly received, then the whole point of this plot is undermined. Morgan may not care for the documentary himself, but he shouldn't foist his opinions on the national press of the day.

Then followed a string of episodes where we see royals discontent with their lot. The Queen confides to a chum who's helping her out with her horses that horse breeding was what she really wanted to do with her life, not "the other thing". Prince Philip has a mid-life crisis triggered by the moon landing - what is his life of visiting factories for dentures and such-like worth compared to walking on the moon? (As to that, I bet the employees of that factory were happy to get a spot of royal glamour.) Prince Charles doesn't feel he can get his voice heard. His split with Camilla is blamed firmly on his family, for dramatic effect (though if she did two-time him with Andrew Parker-Bowles, I would have thought that had something to do with it). Princess Margaret gets routinely shafted, as in the previous two seasons. And so on and so forth. It's pretty tiring, though things do get more exciting every time Margaret's around.

"Everything is politics", prime minister Wilson glumly states when an adviser questions whether anyone would want to make political hay out of the tragedy at Aberfan. Ironically, The Crown is best when it's not political, but dwells on human relationships. The friendship between the Queen and Wilson is nicely handled, and more believable than in Morgan's play The Audience. Philip reaching out to a group of clerics he has earlier derided is a moving payoff to an uneven episode. After Margaret tries to kill herself, she and her sister are allowed a scene of real affection and understanding, where Queen Elizabeth confesses that to go on without her sister would be unbearable. Moments like these are welcome, though I feel myself more and more viewing the protagonists in The Crown as fictional characters who happen to have the same names and positions as some real-life figures. I do believe that's the best way.