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Of course The Crown won't have many fans on Urban and with every season there is the expected fist shaking and exclamations of how it's shite, by those who approach it with the expectation to hate it because they object to the subject matter itself.

I nearly gave up after the first two episodes of season one and made fun of it, but then there is an episode where Elizabeth II has an argument with the Queen Mother for not giving her a decent education, considering all the far smarter people she is required to converse with at functions and it becomes compelling, It mines drama from very ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. I'm a republican but that doesn't mean I can't relate to the characters as people, especially as these are fictionalised versions of the real thing. The series humanises them, but it doesn't flatter them and it only confirms my feelings about the absurdity of a monarchy in the 20th century and beyond. Peter Morgan is an excellent writer, he writes the entire thing and as filmmaking this is impressive. I completely disagree with the complaints the acting. The combination of writing and acting is first rate, the characters are multifaceted and the cast do an extraordinary job of bringing them to life.
 
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I think the problem with the Crown s4 episodes I’ve watched so far is that the events it is depicting are fundamentally uninteresting. It works best in my opinion when it depicts interesting political/historical events with the royal family being a backdrop. For example the abdication crisis or Suez. So far S4 has just had the simpering Sloane (I see from the episode list that unemployment, South African sanctions and the Falklands is coming up so hopefully it get a bit more interesting).
 
I have avoided The Crown until now but was sneakily manipulated into watching the new series. Plus there is fuck all else happening.

It's actually OK, not least because it makes being a Royal look really shit, which is tiny violin time - but also another good reason for abolishing the monarchy.

The stuff about the Bowes-Lyon sisters was an interesting angle to take as was centreing Michael Fagan.

Gillian Anderson as Thatcher is just not good though.
 
Winot said:
I think the problem with the Crown s4 episodes I’ve watched so far is that the events it is depicting are fundamentally uninteresting. It works best in my opinion when it depicts interesting political/historical events with the royal family being a backdrop. For example the abdication crisis or Suez. So far S4 has just had the simpering Sloane (I see from the episode list that unemployment, South African sanctions and the Falklands is coming up so hopefully it get a bit more interesting).
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It explores the psychology of these characters against the backdrop of major historical events and you'd like to see the opposite. I don't see how an "interesting historical event of the week" series with the characters in the background would be compelling as human drama, apart from that they weren't at the detre of every major historical or political event of their time. Documentary is far better suited to that than drama. Sure, the Balmoral episode isn't about a major historical event, but I thought it was astute in the way is dissected Thatcher vs the royals and nobody apart from Diana comes out well. Thatcher is humourless, unimaginative and inflexible, the toffs are coarse, calculating and snobbish. It was also structured nicely, with the motive of the injured stag weaving through it.

What struck me about Diana is just how much of a kid she still was and how cruelly they set her up. I always had mixed feeling about her. In some ways she really wasn't that bright, but many of us gays feel enormous gratitude for the way she shone a light on HIV/AIDS at a time when AIDS patients were treated as lepers who deserved all they got. She showed genuine compassion, which was much needed considering how Reagan and Thatcher behaved in light of the crisis. I also think the actress who plays her is spot on.

I'm still in two minds about Gillian Anderson's Thatcher four episodes in. She's more exaggerated and grotesque than Meryl Streep's take on the role (in a film, which unlike The Crown, was pretty dreadful but which won Streep an Oscar). Streep was more low key, but that also didn't feel quite right as Thatcher was always performing, there was nothing natural about the way she spoke and moved. In the early episodes she goes for Thatchers class insecurity in the early stages as the PM, which is not something Thatcher was known for and it comes across as frailty. I don't think she's terrible though and no worse than Streep, it's just that Thatcher presents a real challenge to an actor when trying to unearth the human under the construct.
 
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I think part of the thing is that the first few scenes watching someone play a famous person, you’re distracted by the question of accuracy. Most often this is ameliorated by taking quite a subtle approach to the physical and vocal transformation, (see Michael Sheen’s excellent takes on Frost, Blair, that football manager etc) - and we forget about the transformation.


The thing is, with Thatcher - and especially the version of thatcher drawn in this show - the entire driving force of the character is a relentless effort to be super humanly strong, and without self-doubt or empathy. Proper “stop up the access and passage to remorse...” stuff.

No one is like that. Not even her. But (within this script) she is so committed to the conviction that she will be that way, that the effort of maintaining this way of living is tangible. Every syllable, every movement has effortful, painful deliberate choice driving through it. I think it’s a great choice, that - over the course of the ten episodes - makes sense of someone who otherwise would seem like a 2 dimensional monster acting from no internal motivation.
 
Reno said:
Of course The Crown won't have many fans on Urban and with every season there is the expected fist shaking and exclamations of how it's shite, by those who approach it with the expectation to hate it because they object to the subject matter itself.
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That's not it at all (for me). I can (usually) separate how I feel about the reality from an interest in how it's depicted. I haven't watched many episodes; a few from seasons 1 and 3, and some of s4e1. Much of it was enjoyable from the perspective of wondering how accurate it was and, assuming that some of it was, getting a glimpse of a world I don't understand.

spanglechick said:
I think part of the thing is that the first few scenes watching someone play a famous person, you’re distracted by the question of accuracy.
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I get what you mean (I think), but my problem isn't that GA's Thatcher is not enough like the real one, but that her version seems based on extremes.

If she acted like that to play Thatcher giving some important speech or other, or to command an otherwise all male meeting, when Thatcher herself would have been hamming it up, that would be fair enough. But GA is giving all the ham when she's playing a scene at home with Dennis and doing the ironing.

Granted I didn't watch much, but there was no nuance at all in the portrayal and, for me, that's what made it cringeworthy parody. If there's evidence that Thatcher was 'on stage' 24/7, even alone with her husband, then I stand corrected. But otherwise, GA isn't portraying a real person, even a Hyacinth Bucket of one, and it shows.

On the other had, if portraying her as a caricature is an informal anarchist action, it has my full support :thumbs:
 
Here you go:




Absolutely nothing like the Gillian Anderson/Spitting Image/Janet Brown characters. The latter two were comedy characters though. GA is supposed to be serious.
 
Even if you don't like Gillian Anderson's performance, people argue like the entire season revolves around Thatcher, when overall she occupies little screen time. Maybe that's the impression you get if you get if you only watch bits of the series here and there, but then you also aren't in the position to judge the overall quality of the series. The Crown never pretends to be realistic, it's a playwrights interpretation of private moments and conversations nobody was witness to. I think he gets to the basic truths of the characters, their relationships and wider impact, even if the specifics are a piece of fiction. While not comparing Peter Morgan to Shakespeare, he does a similar thing with recent British history. He turns it into effective drama.

Unlike The Iron Lady, which was way too sympathetic towards Thatcher, The Crown at least presents Thatcher as an antagonist and as loathsome and corrosive at almost every turn.
 
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Mation said:
That's not it at all (for me). I can (usually) separate how I feel about the reality from an interest in how it's depicted. I haven't watched many episodes; a few from seasons 1 and 3, and some of s4e1. Much of it was enjoyable from the perspective of wondering how accurate it was and, assuming that some of it was, getting a glimpse of a world I don't understand.


I get what you mean (I think), but my problem isn't that GA's Thatcher is not enough like the real one, but that her version seems based on extremes.

If she acted like that to play Thatcher giving some important speech or other, or to command an otherwise all male meeting, when Thatcher herself would have been hamming it up, that would be fair enough. But GA is giving all the ham when she's playing a scene at home with Dennis and doing the ironing.

Granted I didn't watch much, but there was no nuance at all in the portrayal and, for me, that's what made it cringeworthy parody. If there's evidence that Thatcher was 'on stage' 24/7, even alone with her husband, then I stand corrected. But otherwise, GA isn't portraying a real person, even a Hyacinth Bucket of one, and it shows.

On the other had, if portraying her as a caricature is an informal anarchist action, it has my full support :thumbs:
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In this show, this interpretation of her is a woman so twisted that she doesn’t gossip and joke with her husband, that she tells her daughter quite without shame that she has always preferred her son... I think it’s a very specific, very extreme depiction of her.
 
spanglechick said:
In this show, this interpretation of her is a woman so twisted that she doesn’t gossip and joke with her husband, that she tells her daughter quite without shame that she has always preferred her son... I think it’s a very specific, very extreme depiction of her.
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That's what she does (or doesn't do, e.g. gossip), not how she does it. I'd be much better able to watch a depiction of what she did if it didn't involve such exaggerated rasping and neck craning. The other actors don't seem to be doing parodies/extreme depictions/a theatre performance, so my expectations were different.

If this were a stage show then I wouldn't personally want to see it (I can't suspend my disbelief in that context/setting), but I can imagine it working for people who like theatre. But it's telly not theatre or a televised play, and she stands out like a sore thumb; like she's playing in a different production of the story, with a different director and different sensibilities (not the character but the actor). (I haven't seen the Diana yet, though.)

Anyway. We probably won't agree on it, but those are the reasons why it makes me cringe!
 
Badgers said:
The Crown is surely produced for the larger USA audience rather than the UK?
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Everything on Netflix is produced with US money for an international audience with productions from all round the world but creatively The Crown is a British production. It was created and is entirely written by the British playwright Peter Morgan, who has specialised in writing stage/tv plays and movies about British politics and about Elizabeth II.

It's mostly an expansion of his stage play The Audience about the queen's audiences with all the prime ministers during her reign and his film The Queen, about the fallout from Diana's death, both starring Helen Mirren. Those were for a British audience and The Crown could have been produced for British TV, if it was done on a lower budget.
 
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Fozzie Bear said:
I have avoided The Crown until now but was sneakily manipulated into watching the new series. Plus there is fuck all else happening.

It's actually OK, not least because it makes being a Royal look really shit, which is tiny violin time - but also another good reason for abolishing the monarchy.

The stuff about the Bowes-Lyon sisters was an interesting angle to take as was centreing Michael Fagan.

Gillian Anderson as Thatcher is just not good though.
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The episode with the sisters showed them for the ruthless grifters they are. The most revealing and troubling episode of the series.
 
iamwithnail said:
Quite enjoying 'To the Lake', russian zombie esque series atm.
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I bloody love it. I think mentioning zombies does it a great dis-service.

I love that it just launches into the breakdown of society in the first episode, I love the use of humour, great characters, fast paced and only 8 episodes instead of some 30 episode US type bollocks where half of the time is spent with everyone talking about their bloody feelings. "Show, don't tell" is something these writers understand.

Recommended

I refuse to watch The Crown on principal
 
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Mation said:
That's what she does (or doesn't do, e.g. gossip), not how she does it. I'd be much better able to watch a depiction of what she did if it didn't involve such exaggerated rasping and neck craning. The other actors don't seem to be doing parodies/extreme depictions/a theatre performance, so my expectations were different.

If this were a stage show then I wouldn't personally want to see it (I can't suspend my disbelief in that context/setting), but I can imagine it working for people who like theatre. But it's telly not theatre or a televised play, and she stands out like a sore thumb; like she's playing in a different production of the story, with a different director and different sensibilities (not the character but the actor). (I haven't seen the Diana yet, though.)

Anyway. We probably won't agree on it, but those are the reasons why it makes me cringe!
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Spot on. Her acting seems so hugely out of place that I’m surprised there’s this much debate about it. Is it that Spangles and Reno are more invested in drama than most and they’re seeing stuff that we’re missing?
 
Spymaster said:
Spot on. Her acting seems so hugely out of place that I’m surprised there’s this much debate about it. Is it that Spangles and Reno are more invested in drama than most and they’re seeing stuff that we’re missing?
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That’s a subjective opinion and of course those if us who have watched the entire show see it differently than someone who appears to just watch a relative small part, apparently because of Thatcher. While I‘m not entirely sold in her performance myself (I’m up to episode 6) Thatcher‘s personae was a performance, therefore she never seemed entirely natural around others. It certainly helps to watch the show in it’s entirety rather than focusing on the bits with her in it, as hers merely is a supporting performance. Not sure why you make the entire show dependent on her performance, in several episodes she doesn't appear at all, in others just for a few minutes.
 
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Maybe it helps that I don't really remember seeing the real Thatcher (or impressions) on the TV at the time, so this version doesn't bother me.
 
The first couple seemed okay scene setting so we stuck with it. ‘It’s okay, she’s his sister’ made us certain to continue.
 
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