The Crown season 3: Outstanding Story, Worthy Chapters

The Crown is back on Netflix with a third season, and almost a completely new cast, with Olivia Colman as Elizabeth, Tobias Menzies as Philip, etc.  I liked the cast and the episodes even more than I did the first two seasons.

Among favorite storylines as episodes -

• Prince Charles (very well played by Josh O'Connor) had at least two episodes devoted to his growing into full adulthood.  One finds him in Wales learning the Welsh language.  The other has him back in England, falling in love with Camilla Shand.  In both cases, we find Charles to be more thoughtful, almost philosophic and tender, than we might have thought.  And the second episode shows Elizabeth at first not against Charles marrying Camilla.  It's only when she learns that Camilla's other boyfriend, Parker Bowles, also slept with Princess Anne, that Elizabeth joins the rest of her family in opposing the marriage.  All in all, very sensitively portrayed.
• Speaking of philosophy, there's an outstanding episode portraying Philip's reaction to the Americans landing on the Moon in 1969.  This event is expertly woven into Philip's midlife crisis, more specifically into Philip's need to find some greater meaning in life.  His idea that the astronauts, having been off this planet, may have experienced some greater meaning, and could convey it to Philip, makes perfect sense, and was the motive for my own anthology, Touching the Face of the Cosmos.  And it also made a different kind of sense that Philip, disappointed with what the astronauts told him, found a spiritual satisfaction of sorts right here on Earth.
• The literally political stuff was also excellent, with Elizabeth adopting to and herding changes in Prime Ministers, from Churchill to Wilson to Heath to Wilson.  But where were the Beatles, and their "Uh oh, Mr. Wilson, Uh oh, Mr. Heath"?
• Margaret, played to the saucy hilt by Helena Bonham Carter in two episodes, one bonding with the coarse Lyndon Johnson, the other trying to divest herself of her philandering husband, was also top drawer.
• And, just good measure, let me throw in what a good job Charles Dance did as Mountbatten, first almost pulling off a coup, next steering Charles away from his true love.

So The Crown season 3 was outstanding in all kinds of ways, moving Elizabeth's story along - I forgot to say how effectively she was portrayed in the Welsh mining disaster, finding her tears and heart, at long last - and telling individual stories about love, philosophy, and politics which are worthy on their own.  I heartily recommend it.

See also  The Crown season 1: Peerless ...  The Crown season 2: Standing Ovation

The Widow: Jolt to the Heart of Darkness

Check out The Widow, eminently binge-able on Amazon Prime Video, a top-drawer action series with great locations in the Congo and strong acting by Kate Beckinsale in the lead role.

She's the widow, and gets caught up in lethal twists and turns after she sees what looks like a quick shot of her husband in a demonstration in Kinshasa three years after he was reported killed in a nearby plane crash, in which not every passenger's body was identified.  Just about everyone is a culprit - including, yes, our dependence on smartphones - and memorable characters abound, from a 12-year old girl pressed into service as a child-soldier (well played by Shalom Nyandiko) to a guy from Iceland (with a love of Whistler's Mother) who did survive the flight but was blinded (well played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson).  Even Charles Dance puts in a customarily suave, savvy, and dexterous performance.

But Beckinsale runs the gamut from heartbroken to furious to tender - not always to different people - and since her Georgia Wells had some military experience, she's also good with a gun.   There've been many other screen narratives of people looking for lost loved ones, but none with this level of kick-in-the-stomach shockers in just about every episode, and none situated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   The combination of the downed flight in the jungle, intercutting of all kinds of flashbacks, and psychological stressors undergone by all sides in the story are reminiscent of Lost at its best (including a strong supporting role by Alex Kingston), and in a different way, of 24: Redemption, which thrust Jack Bauer into a fictional African nation beset by all manner of murderous characters.

I wouldn't quite say Georgia Wells is a female Jack Bauer, but they do have a lot in common, and I certainly would be up for seeing her continue in a sequel series.  Kudos to writers Harry and Jack Williams.

 

Childhood's End 1.2: Losing My Religion

A really good episode of Childhood's End last night - 1.2 in the three day mini-series - which dealt with the impact of aliens on Earth on our terrestrial religions.

The first episode, and part of this second episode, focused on the impact of the Overloads on Earthling science.   The vastly superior tech of the aliens makes our science unnecessary and obsolete.   The impact on religion is even more destructive.

Religion is more than unnecessary in light of the Overloads.  Their presence here on Earth is incompatible with the very bases of most of our religions.  Karellen says this quite clearly near the end, when he points out that we already knew that all of our religions, with their competing views of existence and the universe, could not be right.  But now we see that none could be right.

This, by the way, could well happen as humans go out into the cosmos as encounter alien intelligences - we don't have to be invaded to come upon this challenge to religion.  Some of the essays and stories in Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion delve into this issue.

It was portrayed cogently and beautifully in Childhood' End last night.  The ending was also powerful, when Karellen reveals why he prevented our leading human couple from having children. It was to save them the pain that would ensue.

Tonight we'll see exactly what he was alluding to.  In the meantime, hats off to Charles Dance for his customarily superb performance, and to Childhood's End for now breaking some powerful new ground on television.

See also Childhood's End 1.1: Familiar Territory and Childhood's End 1.3: Literally

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