“The senior royals seem dangerously deluded and out of touch … and the Prince of Wales impatient for a great role in public life, not realizing his great asset is his wife,” says Prime Minister John Major (Jonny Lee Miller) in the first episode of the new season of "The Crown," after Queen Elizabeth II (now played by Imelda Staunton) frustratingly spends most of her time with him asking for the government to pay to repair her yacht.
It’s the first season of the acclaimed drama from Netflix to be released after Elizabeth’s death, and the onscreen drama is catching up with real time — setting out to retell the worst public period in the late queen’s life. In the weeks just before the show’s release, tempers were already frayed. Dame Judi Dench wrote a letter asking the streaming giant to call the show a “fictionalized drama” in a disclaimer. John Major himself got ahead of the news cycle and said certain scenes were a “barrel-load of malicious nonsense.” The official biographer of the late queen mother called it “deliberately hurtful.” A Guardian columnist even described it as a “war against the Crown.”
But Buckingham Palace and King Charles III — now in his own great role in public life — can rest easy. No one comes off as a villain. Not Charles, played by Dominic West in a conciliatory gesture of casting generosity. West’s charisma and layered performance make Charles’s well-known marital difficulties almost sympathetic.
