The Crown season 4: Margaret Thatcher and The Queen, Charles and Diana

I thought Season 4 of The Crown, which my wife and I just finished binge watching, was the best of the series so far.  It had two toweringly important stories, each brilliantly acted and powerfully presented.

Margaret Thatcher, the U.K.'s Iron Lady, contemporary of Ronald Reagan (from my American perspective), was tour-de-force portrayed by Gillian Anderson.  Her acting, excellent to begin with in The X-Files, just gets better and better.  Her conversations with Olivia Coleman as Queen Elizabeth II were non-pareil.  Woman-to-woman, perfect tones of voice and gestures and head inclinations and facial expressions, these conversations are a veritable textbook of how to act.  And the true story of Thatcher, the combination of her real toughness and real vulnerabilities, including her clinging love of power, rang bells as to what's happening in the United States right now.  Trump has none of Thatcher's steel.  His toughness is all bravado.  But he has the same love of power.  And though Thatcher believed in democracy, albeit as a hard-eyed conservative, and Trump is a fascist at heart, their penchant for clinging to power is disturbing to contemplate, and deftly portrayed by Anderson as Thatcher in The Crown.

Charles and Diana, as we all know, is a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy.  Josh O'Connor has Charles, at least far as we saw him in the news clips, pretty well down pat.  The slightly bent head, the almost diffident smile, all of that hiding a keen wit and a boiling well of anger at being stuck in this marriage and even life makes a riveting counterpoint to Emma Corrin's Diana, innocent at first, growing into a thirst for fame, soaking it up, and the beginning of a real humanitarian soul that leads her to hug a boy with AIDS in Harlem, NY.  The two of them drive themselves and hence the larger family to the breaking point.

But the Queen survives it all, and succeeds, better politically than personally, but still tolerably well at this point, as the family celebrates an internally frosty Christmas in the closing scene.  I have no idea how accurate this all is.  I of course know nothing of Elizabeth personally, and I prefer ancient Roman history to England for the past seventy years.  But, as I always tell my students, docu-dramas never tell the complete truth, not usually even most of it, and that's ok.  Because, at their best, they can tell deeper truths about human affairs, in all senses of that word.   And this season of The Crown does one fabulous job of it.

See also  The Crown season 1: Peerless ...  The Crown season 2: Standing Ovation ... The Crown season 3: Outstanding Story, Worthy Chapters

 

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

Broadchurch Season 3: Hope to See You Again

BBC America offered the series finale of Broadchurch last night - the end of the third and apparently final season - with customary complexity, emotional turmoil, and sheer brilliance.

The lead characters Hardy (David Tennant) and Miller (Olivia Colman) were good and true to their personas to the very last drop, with Hardy saying no to Miller's offer to have a drink, she ever striving to humanize their relationship and he ever resisting.

The plot this season, as the two search for a rapist of an older woman, once again managed to serve up a plethora of suspects, all plausible and many despicable, each in their own ways.  And the revelation at the end of the whodunnit was nonetheless surprising.

This third season also managed to provide at least a little closure on the crime which started the series off two seasons ago, the death of Danny.  The Latimers are fractured, maybe, almost, beyond repair, and the final scene between Beth (Jodie Whittaker, moving on to Dr. Who, which of course Tennant once played) and Mark (Andrew Buchan) was itself worth the price of admission.

For a variety of reasons, the American version of this drama (Gracepoint), which also starred Tennant, was disappointing, and lasted only a single season.  But the British version, also for a variety of reasons, is memorable as one of the best police dramas ever on any television, and certainly deserves and could support further seasons, in case that counts for anything.

Those reasons include superb acting in all the leading and supporting roles, stories with sharp turns at every juncture, and a realistic view of human nature that is almost Dickensian, except darker and Freudian, too.

I hope to see more of it, someday - and Miller, I'll have a drink with you any time.

See also Broadchurch 2.1: Stronger than Ever

And see also  Broadchurch: Powerful Viewing ... Broadchurch 1.2: Brooding Excellence ... Broadchurch 1.3: The Spy ... Broadchurch 1.4: The Unusual Suspects ... Broadchurch 1.5: Good Loving and Almost Loving ... Broadchurch 1.6: "A Break from Being Sad" ... Broadchurch 1.7: Missing Links ... Broadchurch Season 1 Finale: "Lying Next to the Murderer"

a different kind of murderer

Gracepoint Debuts: Deja Vu with a Vengeance

Gracepoint debuted on Fox this past Thursday - the 10-part remake of the 8-part British series Broadchurch, which was on BBC America last year, and, word has it, was originally supposed to have 10 episodes, too.   Word also has it that the ending has been changed for Gracepoint - meaning, the killer in Broadchurch will not be the killer in Gracepoint - but otherwise the story will be the same.

And it's a powerful, heart-wrenching story indeed, in which there are as many or more prime suspects in the killing of Danny as his age - 11.   Further, these suspects come from everywhere, including Danny's family and the family of one of the two main investigating officers.

In a remarkable move, David Tennant plays the lead investigator in Gracepoint as well as Broadchurch, though with different names.  Anna Gunn of Breaking Bad fame plays his second in command, with the same name, though with a ranking of Detective rather than DS, which was Ellie Miller's rank in Broadchurch for the character memorably played by Olivia Colman.

There's been lots of head-scratching and even complaint about why a series recently shown in America should be re-made with the same lead actor no less.   But I've got to say:  after feeling the same way, I'm now glad that the series has been remade.   Why?   Because the story is so compelling, complex in plot yet fundamentally raw in emotion, that I'm happy to see it again.

I reviewed Broadchurch here last year.  You're welcome to read those reviews, though they will no doubt contain spoilers, if not about the ending then about how our story and characters get there. And to make matters even more interesting on the meta level, there will be a second season of Broadchurch over in the UK.

It's enough to make your head spin - deja vu with a vengeance - but you know what? - I think it's good for television to do crazy things like this.

#SFWApro



A different kind of police fiction