The Crown Season 2 dropped on the 8th of December 2017 with 10 episodes.
Such a hard series to follow was S1, and the reportedly doubled budget for S2 illuminates the past of the current British monarchy to brighten the present of our televisions and mobile devices.
Stunning is one word that comes to mind as it manages to have something in it’s basket for everyone. The series is once again written by Peter Morgan.
Crisp but never dull, it looks at Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and Philip’s (Matt Smith) alleged marital struggles which leaves us with one classic scene where the Queen tells her sulking husband, “This restlessness of yours has got to be a thing of the past.”
If you like your historical and political affairs, spread across the series there is the dire Suez Canal situation between Egypt and England, that gnarly Profumo scandal (I know some of you saw 1989 film ‘Scandal’ with Joanne Whalley), a secret lunch club of debauchery for men-children (Philip and his Eton-esque, Parliament boys again), The Marburg Papers (go and Google these and give yourself a history lesson on the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson x the Nazis circa 1945. Yes!).
For the more fashionable oriented in us, there are the Kennedys, rather that first lady Jacqueline Kennedy (Jodi Balfour) whom the Queen tries to match up with in terms of her fashion style, probably not knowing that style icon Diana Vreeland was solely responsible for the style of that other fashion icon we now know as Jackie Kennedy or Jackie O., depending on how old you are.
Not so pleasant is the episode dedicated to the schooling of Prince Charles who went to Gordonstoun, a very strict school somewhere in Scotland where only the fittest survive, literally. You might learn to accommodate Charles after this episode is the spoiler.
And of course, there is the glorious Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) and her marriage to Tony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode). It’s all sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in their part of the Palace and clearly something we don’t often think the Queen had to adjust herself to.
“I know who I am, a woman for the modern age. Free to live, free to love and free to break away” we hear Margaret saying as she speeds off on the back of a motorbike.
Will we ever forgive the Queen for not allowing Margaret to marry her one true love Peter Townsend? Probably not, though he gets with the 19yr old Margaret lookalike and once again Margaret is thwarted in announcing her own marriage before Peter does because the Queen is pregnant and has to give birth first prior to the announcement. Quite.
Claire Foy is almost irreplaceable as the leader of the series & country and it’s no secret that Olivia Colman has a massive crown to fill in seasons 3 & 4.
Foy’s depiction of the Queen lends itself to a quiet construct of deep breaths and long gazes where you feel she might just about miss the beat on delivery, but no, she gets us each time and we exhale and raise our chins and eyebrows in time with her.
Her remarkable performance in this series should be a shoo-in to the Globes, Emmys, BAFTAS for 2018. Long live the Queen!
The Crown S2 is currently streaming on Netflix and gets an 8.5/10 from us.
All images via Netflix.