The Crown: Season 5

"Morgan (is) casting around for side plots to hide the fact that everything he has to say about the Windsors has already been said."

"The Crown’s Diana-divorce season is its weakest yet."

"This was once a superior costume drama, moments of 20th-century history packaged into an upmarket soap opera. But... the show is edging towards trashy telenovela."

"The heart of the series remains creator Peter Morgan’s disarming compassion for the human souls within this lofty institution."

"Unfortunately... Peter Morgan struggles to find the balance between classy and trashy that defined earlier seasons."

"The new cast, led by Imelda Staunton as the Queen and dynamite Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, is sheer perfection."

"Watching the current season feels more like a preference than a requirement."

"While some of this season can feel more like setup for something bigger rather than standing on its own, The Crown remains as engrossing as ever."

"Both more simplistic and less coherent than past seasons."

"The twin spectres of grief and dread loom over the entire season."

"A soapy, frothy, addictive show... If there's a standout, though, it's Debicki, who makes Diana both frustrating and sympathetic."

"Really zings when the show turns a hard gaze toward the maddening ways that Elizabeth and her cohort refuse compassion and adaptation."

"It has been well worth the wait."

"The first three episodes are ditchwater dull. But here’s the good news. It gets better. Much better."

"Much less of this season feels as revelatory... it’s all still executed at a very high level, mind you. The new actors are all wonderful."

"This series, when it hits its stride in the second half at least, is compelling as soap opera."

"The geopolitical wranglings of post-war reconstruction and the rise of the Soviet Union have been replaced, in the show’s appointed scope, by trivial gossip."

"The Crown weighs too heavily in a dismal, drawn out season."