Expect a boatload of awards nominations for Olivia Colman
For anyone who was at all worried The Crown would go downhill after recasting the award winning ensemble that led the series for two seasons, you have nothing to be concerned about. The show has an eye for casting like few others, and less than two minutes in the presence of Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth, Tobias Menzies’ Prince Philip, Helena Bonham Carter’s Princess Margaret and Josh O’Connor’s Prince Charles shows us the royal family is in good hands.
Season 3 jumps to the early 1960’s, where Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins) has just been elected Prime Minister of the UK and the Elizabeth is headed into middle age. The show follows the formula it always has, an exploration of historical events of the time period and how the royals dealt with them, while occasionally taking on the personal lives and important markers of some of the biggest scandals they faced (like Margaret’s divorce and affair with a 24-year-old, or Lord Mountbatten’s behind the scenes plotting of a coup to overthrow the Prime Minister). Olivia Colman steps into the shoes of Claire Foy so superbly you almost don’t notice- it’s as if Colman was born to play the role, and her higher voice even matches the cadence of the real Queen’s more closely. She faces down a mining tragedy this season and brings Philip’s long exiled mother, Princess Alice, to England for her final days, while dealing with increasing turmoil in the love lives of her now grown older children. As always, Elizabeth remains her sturdy, unemotional, unflinching self, always having to be pushed to modernize the crown in even the smallest ways while adhering to tradition as often as possible.
Josh O’Connor gives us an uncanny, sympathetic Prince Charles
This remains an issue for Margaret of course, who Bonham-Carter plays as her usual partygoing, unhappy self, taking over from Vanessa Kirby during the years her marriage to Tony Snowden was falling apart, although Margaret plays a more minor role this year than in previous seasons. Tobias Menzies is dead on as the cantankerous Philip, now settled in his wife’s shadow but still facing the ongoing problems wrestling with his own significance (and his mother). The real discovery this season is Josh O’Connor’s Prince Charles, now a twenty something and played to perfectly awkward pitch by an actor who resembles him to an eery degree. The episode where he is sent to Wales and must learn the language and history of the country is one of the best of the season, exposing the longtime conflict between him and his oppressive family at the very beginning of his public role. The hints of the Camila/Diana scandals are also here, but still to come, as Diana herself is introduced next season (I cannot wait).
The Crown is for royal watchers (and history lovers), a fine and luxuriously fulfilling treat, filled with politics and scandal, and palaces and carriages, somehow without letting you forget about the irreconcilable conflict of the royals’ very existence as modern life continues to evolve. Do the British people need a monarchy? Why do they continue to want it and hate it, and love to hate it at the same time? Creator Peter Morgan knows all of this and remains fascinated by the history of it, as do we. It remains an utterly absorbing, splendidly acted and rendered drama, consistent in tone and touch like few manage to be as series age. I have a feeling this one will not run into that problem.
Grade: A
The new cast steps seamlessly into the shoes of the old one
