What is the monarchy for? What is The Crown for? The two questions slalom side by side as Netflix’s super-lush biographical drama concludes the story of Queen Elizabeth II. But the overriding theme is the same one that has underpinned Peter Morgan’s scripts all along: a life of public service, we are told, is a burden that demands great personal sacrifice, with the main loss being one’s happiness. How convinced you are by that will determine how effective you find The Crown’s denouement.
The series does largely recover from its wobble in the first half of the season, when Princess Diana took over the whole show and led to some wild creative decisions, chief among them “ghost Diana”. The riskiest moment in the new episodes is a dream sequence in which the Queen imagines her reign being ended by the new king, Tony Blair: at the coronation, choristers sing an eerie a cappella version of Things Can Only Get Better.
