The Crown

[Festoon]

Dodi Begins.

[Minion]

West as Charlie is just so wrong. Lesley Manville is brilliant though, in fact all the actresses that have played Princess Margaret have done a stellar job. I feel like she's the heroine of the piece.

[pledge]

On 10/11/2022 at 11:13, Garwoofoo said:

The casting this season - Diana aside - seems so much worse than the other seasons. I wonder if that's just because we're all more familiar with what the Royal Family looked like at this point in their lives? I mean I have no real idea what Prince Philip looked like in the 1950s, he could conceivably have looked like Matt Smith for all I know, but I know damn well he didn't look like Jonathan Pryce in the 1990s.

 

In fact maybe it's just that there are more recognisable faces in there this time around. Dominic West, Jonathan Pryce and Jonny Lee Miller are all very recognisable in their own right, and it takes you out of it a bit. At least Gillian Anderson got the frightwig and the stupid voice to disguise her a bit.

I've only watched one episode but could not agree with this more. It does feel like some of it comes down to your second sentence, but they also seem to cast people more for their 'name' than their appropriateness. West's voice is all over the place. Somehow it appears like a budget version compared to earlier seasons.

[Mawdlin]

I wonder if the casting is down to the producers looking to increasingly appeal to a wider, and therefore American audience. If it isn't due to this then some of the casting decisions are atrocious.

[Ork1927]

11 hours ago, pledge said:

I've only watched one episode but could not agree with this more. It does feel like some of it comes down to your second sentence, but they also seem to cast people more for their 'name' than their appropriateness. West's voice is all over the place. Somehow it appears like a budget version compared to earlier seasons.

5 episodes in now.

 

West seems to occasionally do some Charles mannerisms, but other time does bother at all.

 

And Pryce is all over the place as well.

 

I think what doesn’t help either is there just isn’t a lot going on in the 90s for them to cover unless they made it the full on Diana show, building up to her death and it’s the time of boring PM in major and the Queen herself has nothing to do.

 

Phillip going carriage riding and Charles talking dirty to Camilla for some what seems like hours is not great TV.

[JohnC]

Didn't know Dodi was Jamal Khashoggi's cousin. When I heard the name of Mohamed Al-Fayed's first wife, I thought it's surely just coincidence but eventually looked it up.

[ckny]

The Russian episode may be the most boring thing I've ever watched.

[Flanders]

The first episode of the new season was astonishingly boring. All the main characters spent most of their time talking to anonymous flunkies instead of each other, really weird writing decision.

 

I had forgotten that the first recasting season (3) was also pretty bad - season 4 was one of those rare but wonderful occasions where a TV show pulls out of a nosedive and redefines itself. Pulling the same trick twice was always going to be difficult, especially as there’s just not much left to do with the Queen and Prince Phillip anymore. 

[probotector]

Let’s face it, the crown was always dreary.

 

Its lowest point being the humanisation of Churchill 

[Festoon]

The whole thing was shit since the second series. The recastings never worked. The only god element of the first recasting was whathisname s Charles. 'E was good.

[Zio]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who was bored rigid by this season, nor the only one who didn't like the casting, Debicki aside. I tend to judge things I watch on telly by how much of it I spent scrolling shite on my phone. Whole episodes of this went by with my eyes only on here and Reddit.

[Ork1927]

Episode 9 - Bloody Hell - who heavy handed was that.  Fill up the episode with other fictious couples getting divorced as they've got nothing else to fill the episode with and then make Charles and Diana getting divorced as this massive tragedy.

[Festoon]

Remember the dreadful episode with Prince Philip and the heavy handed moon landing metaphor?

[Illyria]

I'm with you lot on this one. I really enjoyed the first two seasons and it's been downhill from there for me. New season is boring, the casting is terrible except for Diana and I'm just watching it now to get it off my list.  

[Graham S]

The good thing about casting Debicki is she got to add to her oeuvre as the first choice actor if you ever need someone to look sad with their bad husband on a superyacht in the Med. (The Night Manager, Tenet, The Crown). Of the three you’d have thought in this one she’d be the least at risk of being killed, but…

 

I’m hoping for guest appearances on the next series of Succession and as Steve Coogan’s wife in The Trip.

[Ork1927]

So the Queen's main story arc this season was

 

Spoiler

Her favourite yacht got old and nobody would buy her a new one so it was put down.

 

[Minion]

On 18/11/2022 at 15:15, Ork1927 said:

So the Queen's main story arc this season was

 

  Hide contents

Her favourite yacht got old and nobody would buy her a new one so it was put down.

 

 

Yes. Poor Queenie. Loves her dogs though.

[DeciderVT]

Just finished the series and I had absolutely no idea that Olivia Williams was playing Camilla until I read about it afterwards. Didn't recognise her at all.

[Illyria]

Oh wow. Neither did I!

[Professor Rob]

I’ve no idea who they had playing Tony Blair, but he didn’t look like him, sound like him, or act like him.