The fifth season of “The Crown”, the flagship series of Netflix, is launched in the scene of the launch of the royal yacht “Britannia”. The year is 1954 and the launching queen is the young Elizabeth played by Claire Foy from the first seasons. From there we jump decades ahead to a medical examination of the 65-year-old queen, now played by Imelda Staunton, who replaced Olivia Colman from last season.
Her health is generally fine, but she is surprised to find that she has gained weight. “It doesn’t make sense, in terms of diet and behavior I haven’t changed anything,” she says. “The older we get, the harder it is to lose weight,” the doctor explains to her. This dialogue is metaphorical for the theme of the season, in which the Queen continues to insist on sticking to tradition and not changing anything in her behavior, but discovers that what once worked works less well today, and that many of the British are fed up with her and her family members.
The opening scene, which seems to be cut from a news diary, is also metaphorical – the yacht “Britannia” is a metaphor for the royal house, and in the present of 1991 it needs massive renovations (which the government refuses to finance). Such is “The Crown”, a series paved with metaphors (remember the hunted deer from the previous season?), so much so that in the eighth episode, when the Queen realizes that it is time to buy a new TV and connect to a satellite (she claims that this would be a betrayal of the BBC), she herself points out that “even the televisions are metaphors in this place”. This indication sounds like a self-irony of the creator of the series and its almost exclusive screenwriter, Peter Morgan.
In its fifth season, “The Crown” gains a new cast, even if not new central characters. It is still enticing to watch, but it seems that this time the dense metaphors (there is also a metaphorical pheasant hunt) outweigh the drama, which does not add new layers and remains on the surface. This is also due to the fact that the entire drama is centered on the exploits of the family members in the nineties, which became less dramatic, and the political layer has almost disappeared. Except for polls in the media, which follow ups and downs in the popularity of the royal family, there is basically no reference here to the British people, nor to substantial historical events (except for the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, which is also presented as an image of the kingdom’s weakening). And so “The Crown” becomes a mere gossip series, the plot of which includes the revelation of three secret tapes of Charles and Diana.
The main conflict during the season is Prince Charles’ desire to replace his mother on the throne. His attempts to probe Prime Minister John Major (the excellent Jonny Lee Miller) have already been rebuffed by the original Major, plus we know he’ll have to wait another thirty years or so, so it’s a plot line that’s going nowhere. What’s more, after becoming a despicable character in the previous season, the prince was redeemed in the current season. First he is played by Dominic West who Charles would dream of looking like. Second, his longtime love for Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) gives life to his dry character, and at one point even the new Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Corbett) is so impressed with him that he praises him in his wife’s ears. His very final parting scene with Diana, in which they discuss sadly the failure of their marriage, is good for both of their characters.
Diana’s story, now in the excellent portrayal of Elizabeth Debicki, is also not progressing anywhere – when she and Charles separate and later also divorce, she is still stuck. This is of course part of her frustration, but dramatically there is no progress compared to the previous season. Whereas Staunton only gets a few opportunities to demonstrate her greatness – and then she does it the way only she knows how. Unlike the dramatic strategy of the first four seasons – to present to us touching characters of fresh and passionate young people trapped in a cage of gold, and then show us how they become rigid and opaque people, causing suffering to those who come next – in the current season, no character really develops beyond what we knew. The aging characters are more preoccupied with the sometimes poignant examination of the missteps in their lives. Thus Princess Margaret (the wonderful Leslie Manville) demands that her queen sister finally acknowledge that she deprived her of the love of her life when she forced her to break up with Peter Townsend (now played by Timothy Dalton).
So it turns out that the most interesting character is precisely that of Muhammad al-Fayed, to whom the entire third chapter is dedicated. The Egyptian boy who sells Coca-Cola on the streets grows up to be a billionaire who tries with all his might to become a British gentleman and win the queen’s attention. But this eludes him, and sends Diana to him, without imagining the sequel. The Israeli actor Salim Dow is excellent in the role of Al Fayed and his scene with Diana at the races is one of the best of the season. He returns in the tenth episode of the season, which prepares us for the future meeting with his uncle Dodi (Khalid Abdullah), but ends, paraphrasing T.S. Eliot, not in a boom but in nothing.
“The Crown”, now on Netflix