It’s been a big year for real world Royal drama, what with Queen Elizabeth II passing away, but those of you who prefer your dynastic drama fictionalised, you’re in luck: The Crown season five is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.
“Fictionalised” might be the key phrase here; recently revered thesp Judi Dench and less-than-revered former British Prime Minister John Major (who is played by Jonny Lee Miller, aka Sick Boy from Trainspotting, this season) made a bit of a fuss over Netflix not earmarking the wildly popular series as a heavily dramatised take on the lives of the Windsors, leading the streamer to append a blurb to the beginning of every episode.
This is just in time for season five, which covers an extremely turbulent period in the dynasty’s history, including the breakdown of the marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and possibly even Diana’s death—the shots in the trailer of Elizabeth Debicki’s Diana and Khalid Abdalla’s Dodi Fayed getting into a car are certainly heavy with portent.
Debicki is, of course, inheriting the role of Diana from incumbent actress Emma Corrin; spanning decades of real-world history, The Crown isn’t afraid to recast regularly. This season’s ensemble also includes Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Phillip, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Dominic West as Prince Charles, and Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles. Whatever your take on the material, it’ll be performed by a simply stellar cast.
What will be interesting is how audiences react to the depiction of well-known events that occurred in living memory—everybody who was alive at the time remembers where they were when Diana died, for example—an event as indelibly marked in the collective consciousness as the assassination of JFK. Is The Crown season five as you remember it? Best fire up Netflix to find out.
