Ghosts, tears and tragedy - we review The Crown
We watched all four episodes of Season 6, Part 1 and here’s our verdict
We take our job seriously here at The Royal List and Kerry spent all of Thursday weeping at her TV screen, as she watched the first four episodes of the final season of The Crown.
While we don’t want to reveal any spoilers – it’s not as though we don’t know what happens, all too well - Kerry wrote an opinion piece for The Telegraph. Here are some of her thoughts:
I cried watching The Crown and I’m not ashamed to admit it. The final episode of part one, is intensely moving.
“All one wants is for that girl to find peace,” says Imelda Staunton as the Queen. All you want, as you watch the final season play out, is to shout, “Don’t go to Paris.”
The first four episodes of Season 6 of The Crown dropped on Netflix on Thursday. They show the last few weeks of Diana’s life, in the summer of 1997. And cheesy dialogue aside – when Dominic West as Prince Charles thanks Diana for how well they are co-parenting, Elizabeth Debicki as Diana replies, “She didn’t get to keep the man of her dreams, but the friend of her dreams” - on the whole, it’s very poignant.
The American press has praised the show for its restraint, but the British press wasn’t as generous, with The Guardian dubbing it, “so bad it’s basically an out-of-body experience” and the UK Telegraph, “a grim intrusion into Diana’s final hours”.
Depicting the death of Diana over four episodes means it inevitably turns into a soap opera, particularly in episode three. It takes way too long to get to the horror we all know is coming and so the space is filled with shoe-horned-in self-reflective dialogue, as though all the characters were having therapy.
But the aftermath of the crash is treated sensitively and episode four had me sobbing. I think you’d have to be very cynical not to be moved. The only thing producers should have exorcised is Diana as a ghost. I just about survived the scene with ghost-Diana and Charles, only to be horrified when she returned for a final time to give the Queen a pep talk: “It’s time to show you are ready to learn.” I almost wanted Imelda to snap, “Oh, sod off”.
But the biggest surprise was creator Peter Morgan making Charles the saviour of the Royal Family, as opposed to PM Tony Blair, which he did in his 2006 movie, The Queen. Declaring, “I let her down in life, I won’t let her down in death,” he urges the Queen to go to London and stop hiding away.
Is it a bit schmaltzy? Yes. Should you watch it? Absolutely.
Harry and Charles’s birthday breakthrough
It’s no secret that Charles has always hoped for a reconciliation with his “darling boy”, so reports that Harry called his dad to wish him a very happy 75th birthday must have been the perfect present for the King.
The Duke of Sussex’s Tuesday phonecall is a transatlantic olive branch that The Royal List hopes is the start of happier relations between father and son. Especially as it’s claimed they agreed to chat again next week. After talking to Harry, Charles spoke to Meghan, but we bet he also adored the video of Archie and Lilibet singing “Happy Birthday”.
The King, who famously does not have a mobile phone, also celebrated his big day with a busy schedule launching the Coronation Food Project in Didcot, followed by a Buckingham Palace reception for international nurses and midwives. The King’s groundbreaking food initiative will see networks across Britain supported to reuse greater amounts of surplus food. With 14 million people in the UK living with food insecurity, the issue is an urgent one.
“Food need is as real and urgent a problem as food waste - and if a way could be found to bridge the gap between them, then it would address two problems in one,” wrote King Charles in the Big Issue. “It is my great hope that this Coronation Food Project will find practical ways to do just that – rescuing more surplus food, and distributing it to those who need it most.”
Charles and Camilla ended his special day with a glamorous Clarence House dinner party attended by family and friends, including William and Catherine, Zara and Mike Tindall, Princess Beatrice, Lady Sarah Chatto, her brother, David Armstrong-Jones and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.
New book by Sussexes’ ‘friend’ lobs more bombshells
And just when there are signs of a thawing in the relations between Charles and Harry, a new book, Endgame, by Omid Scobie, who with Carolyn Durand wrote Finding Freedom about Harry and Meghan’s exit from the Royal Family, is rocking the palace with more ‘insider’ allegations.
The publicity blurb promises: “unique insight, deep access and exclusive revelations… pulls back the curtain on an institution in turmoil - exposing the chaos, family dysfunction, distrust and draconian practices threatening its very future.” The book, subtitled Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, has already been serialised in the US by People magazine.
According to Omid, the rift between Harry and William is so bad that there is “no going back” with the Prince of Wales viewing his brother as a “defector”. Omid said that, while writing Endgame, “I was talking to a source quite early on in the process, and they called Harry a ‘defector’ and said that was William’s view.
Omid’s claims include:
* William did not reply to Harry’s text to travel to Balmoral together as the Queen’s final hours approached
* Harry was “kept in the dark” about Queen’s death and learnt she had passed away from his BBC News alert app
* William feels his brother has been “brainwashed by an army of therapists”
* The Duke of Sussex is seen as a “threat to the crown” as he can think for himself
The Sussexes denied co-operating with Omid on Finding Freedom, but Meghan was later forced to admit in the High Court that she authorised an aide to brief him.
However this week, Omid posted on his X account: “And let’s get this nonsense out the way - #ENDGAME is about the current state of the British Royal Family. It’s not “Harry and Meghan’s book”, I’m not “Meg’s pal”, the Sussexes have nothing to do with it, their story is a small part of a much bigger one you can read in 12 days.”
Endgame is published on 28 November, and you can preorder here.
Kate talks about Louis’ ‘feelings wheel’
The Princess of Wales attended her Shaping Us National Symposium this week, where she revealed Prince Louis uses a ‘feelings wheel’ with the rest of his Lambrook school classmates.
Looking fantastic in a purple Emilia Wickstead suit, Catherine chatted to host Fearne Cotton about her younger son’s conversations about mental health. “Louis’s class, they came back with a feelings wheel,” she said. “It’s really good, they go to the classroom - these are five or six year olds - and go in with names or pictures of a colour that represents how they feel that day.”
At Thursday’s symposium, organised by her Royal Foundation’s Centre for Early Childhood, which brought together leaders and experts at London’s Design Museum, Catherine unveiled the results of the international study conducted by the Foundation. The Princess said the findings identified “untapped potential” to bring the worlds of childhood and adulthood together.
“Nurturing skills that enable us to know ourselves, manage our emotions, focus our thoughts, communicate with others, foster positive relationships, and explore the world are just as valuable to our long-term success as reading, writing or arithmetic,” she said.
The Princess also broke some extra news hours before this newsletter went live. This year her annual Together at Christmas Carol Service will be in association with the Royal Foundation for Early Childhood and a big thank you to early years workers. Returning to Westminster Abbey for the third year running on Friday 8 December, it will be broadcast by ITV on Christmas Eve.
Diana’s iconic swimwear for sale
Much of the final season of The Crown sees Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in a range of swimsuits, as she spent her final summer in the South of France. Her leopard-print cossie and iconic blue swimsuit were originally made for her by Gottex, who also supplied The Crown and they have re-released the leopard-print one for sale, £199.99.