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The Crown

I don't always love "The Crown." It's not as tight as "The Queen." (Also, could Peter Morgan work on his titles?)

"The Crown" sometimes wants to tie things together in a way that feels hammy. There is excessive tidiness. I felt this way in an early episode about smog and a later one about a visit from JFK. And--as in many other Netflix series--there's often a sense of bagginess. You sometimes want to ram your head into a wall and ask, "Did this episode really need to be SIXTY MINUTES long?"

I wanted to say that because there's so much "The Crown" does well, the reverence it inspires can be "too much." We should hold "The Crown" to higher standards, for the sake of "The Crown."

The new teaser trailer is what you would expect. The writers need to acknowledge that Olivia Colman has replaced Claire Foy. They show Colman scrutinizing a formal portrait. (We're reminded of the famous "Crown" episode in which Winston Churchill had such a hard time with his own portrait.)

The men surrounding Elizabeth II want her to know that the portrait is fine. "Just a few changes," they say. Droll Olivia Colman studies the painting and offers a correction: "A great many changes."

Colman then acknowledges that the portrait depicts her as "an old bat."

"Nothing to be done," she says. "One just has to get on with it." And she stares at us, via the camera.

"The Crown" is often churning with subtext, and the trailer doesn't disappoint here. We see Elizabeth surrounded by men--as she is often surrounded by men. We see Elizabeth mildly scolding a *lying* man--and we *often* see tough Elizabeth speaking the truth to a weaker man. We see Elizabeth summoning her own stiff upper lip, and we see just a hint of hesitation, a hint of pain. (Pain under impressive stiffness is a main feature of Elizabeth's character.) And we see how something apparently trivial--a flat image--can have emotional, and even political, weight. (This is a show about small things revealing themselves to be bigger than we'd thought.)

I look forward to this show--and especially to the Colman/Carter/Anderson trifecta. We have all waited long enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_TE8yi58S8
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