In a glorious sweep of history that has taken us from the 1947 wedding of the baby-faced Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten to the halcyon days of Cool Britannia in the 1990s, Netflix’s The Crown has been a lavish, panoptic companion through the 20th century. Depicting the House of Windsor through its highs and lows, its stiff upper lips and blubbering bluebloods, it has gained a reputation as the jewel in the Netflix crown. But now, with its final season released this week, the end is near – and, in a twist of fate, the monarchy, The Crown and Netflix itself are all in a more precarious state than when things began in 2016.
At a reported cost of £100m, the first instalment of Netflix’s biopic of Elizabeth II, covering an era of her life unfamiliar to most viewers, was a gamble. Would its audience be receptive to this portrait of a fragile young princess on the cusp of becoming both ruler and legend? The critical consensus was, almost, unanimous. The Guardian called it “addictive”, The Wall Street Journal said it was “outstanding”, and The Washington Post labelled it “scrumptious” (although it should be noted that The Independent poured cold water on this critical love-in).
Netflix, which had already demonstrated itself to be an ambitious insurgent broadcaster following the 2013 release of the heralded House of Cards, was vindicated. “I was saying to Netflix,” Peter Morgan, the show’s creator, said in an interview with Variety back in 2016, “let’s do [more series] only if the show has a significant enough footprint, if it resonates enough with people.”
