As the world is waiting for the third season of The Crown to appear, we are taking a look at the first two seasons of the series and analyze its qualities and paradoxes.
The Crown is a British-American Netflix original series based on the reign, life and times of Queen Elizabeth II, from the age she started her reign, moving forward to the 21st century.
The premise of the show is a very sensitive one, which has been touched on before, but which is very hard to process for a television series or a film. The reason for this is that creating a series about contemporary people and recent history will of course involve a lot of research on the subject, but, ultimately, the characters and events will be fictionalized. In this sense, while it may be tempting to “learn” about the British monarchy from the show, as viewers, we should always keep in mind that we are watching a fictive version of known events. Then, of course, there is the approach to the subject which is also an extremely delicate matter: how deep will the series go – how much backstory will it invent is a matter with which the producers had to deal with and it can be said that they have done a rather good job (at least for the first two seasons).
The series gained its own personality really quickly through lavish cinematography and powerful performances and has managed to capture the spirit of the old royalty of Britain. The directorial choices to add subtle symbols and mise en scène details in order to communicate the emotions and experiences of the characters is magisterial and adds to the artful vision of its creators.
The series has garnered a lot of attention from the media and many magazines and blogs publish reviews of the episodes placing them in parallel with “real-life” gossip about the royals. This is the major paradox of the effect of the series (not of the series itself), as The Crown discusses the trivialization of the concept of royalty and at the same time (involuntarily) creates more gossip around the royals, as the media treats them as reality stars.
The show is a record of a sort of breakdown of society, especially as portrayed in the “Marionettes” episode and talks about a world that rejects deference and, not because it does not need it anymore (as society opens up, in order to maintain order and elegance, deference is needed more than ever), but because it simply no longer wants to be inspired.
The Crown is a manifesto of people who, in a world of decadence, try to hold on to values and politeness.
It’s not clear how and how much the show will continue, but it would be interesting for it to end with the Queen watching a series about her life and at the same time crying and laughing at how wrong they are about everything.