by Jeremy Ricketts-Hagan
Season 5 of The Crown premiered in a year of immense change for the Royal Family, and covers similarly turbulent times for them. Despite having some successes, the series falls short of expectations.
Firstly, the set and costume design really make you feel like you are back in the 1990s. The Crown has always managed to capture the mood of whichever decade it’s in, but I think this is even more impressive since it can be easy to mess up more recent period pieces. Secondly, this season, just like the others, is bedazzled with star actors who give pleasing performances all around. I was particularly impressed by Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret and Dominic West as Prince Charles.
However, this season doesn’t have the same standout performances that previous ones did. While seasons 1 to 4 were lit up by the likes of Olivia Colman and Matt Smith, this season lacked such performances. This is partly because the characterisation within this season is just not as good; characters feel more like a caricature of themselves.
Finally, one key attraction of The Crown was that it gave life to relatively distant events in the national past that were lesser known or had been lost to time. There is simply no way to do that for this season. It would be extremely difficult to find a viewer of the show who did not know that (spoiler alert) Diana and Charles end up divorcing, as this has already been dissected by countless documentaries, TV shows and films. So, there is little insight that this season can offer, and the writers fail to find a solution to this. Thus, The Crown manages to excite in its usual way, but fails to provide the insight that defined its earlier seasons.
