In an era where television has become a cacophony of noise and fast edits, the first thing that strikes you about the royal soap opera The Crown (Netflix, available now) is not its luminous cast, its sumptuous sets, its extraordinary locations or its £100 million budget, although all of those things seem so very present, the series is almost overpowering.
Rather, it is the long, lingering silences. And they are used with great effect: when Prince Philip (Matt Smith) tells Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) that her father has died, not a word is uttered. Instead, the scene is played on the expressions of the actors' faces, delivering to both newly minted monarch and audience a slowly deepening ache of pain.
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Trailer: The Crown
At a time when Britain is recovering from war and her empire is in decline, a young woman takes the throne as a matter of duty not desire.
From the moment it was commissioned, with its huge budget, The Crown has been a study in superlatives. Cliff's Notes summary: it is the most expensive television drama ever produced, on a cost-per-hour basis. So, to ask the obvious, as we chew through the 10 one-hour episodes in one gluttonous sitting, does it live up to the hype? The answer, delivered with a regal wave, is yes. And then some.
It has been shaped masterfully by the pen of writer Peter Morgan, whose credits include the 2006 film The Queen and the 2013 play The Audience, both of which explored different aspects of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. In the The Crown, he has created a curious mixture of royal soap opera, post-Downton Abbey period drama and constitutional tutorage. Romance and betrayal, the staples of such soaps, are writ large here in generous helpings.
Equally, however, it seems to delight in the detail of royal protocol, the complexities of titles and precedence, the minutiae of ancient royal rituals, borrowing more from Debrett's Peerage than from, say, Diana: Her True Story. And though it descends from a television genre defined by B-grade tabloid telemovies with titles such as Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After and The Women of Windsor, all of which managed to be comically dreadful and, at times, hilariously wiggy, The Crown has a more tangible lineage connecting it to shows such as The Sopranos and Game of Thrones.
The reason is simple: this is, at its core, not a royal soap opera, but rather a complex character drama about intangible power. Whether that be the unfurling power of the Queen, the usurping of Prince Philip's, or the political plays of John Lithgow's brilliant Winston Churchill, who clings to the prime ministership and hopes to use the coronation to extend his political life. Then there is the formidable Queen Mary (Eileen Atkins), who manages to be both terrifying and, as she curtseys on weary but unwavering knees before her granddaughter, somehow wholly majestic.
![<i>The Crown</i>, starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith, is about the early married life of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke ...](/web/20161113070319im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/g/k/p/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsk5g8.png/1478993520550.jpg)
It is here we get our clearest sense of the strength and longevity of The Crown's storytelling. Though the marketing will sell it as a story of Elizabeth and Philip, its power is in revealing the stakeholders: Queen Mary, who rebuilt the monarchy and will not let it falter, Mountbatten, who audaciously hopes to stamp his name on the Royal House, or the abdicated former King Edward, who seems simultaneously to be Elizabeth's ally and nemesis.
More fascinating is The Crown's pace. At first it seems slow-moving but hungry: in just three episodes it covers the royal wedding, the 1951 general election, the death of King George VI and the re-emergence of the Duke of Windsor in 1952. But the Queen's coronation is still some way off and, as the last episode rolls into frame, we are still only in the late 1950s. In the end The Crown does the one thing all great television programs do: after gorging on every episode it leaves you hungry for more.
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