The Queen and television have never been bosom friends.
In the late 1960s, television was the medium of choice to try to sell the royal family on the post-war Youthquake through the controversial show. royal family All the world saw was a family with too much tartan on their hands and their sovereign trying to make salad dressing like a suburban hausfrau. So these images went into the (locked) Windsor archives.
In the 1980s, her son Prince Edward persuaded the Queen to let him spend some time on television, and she got Prince Andrew, his wife Sarah, the Duchess of York and the fearsome Princess Anne dressed in mock Tudor wardrobes for a charity appearance at a scary time. cheesy game show. Unsurprisingly, something involving Meatloaf, Sheena Easton and plastic hams only elicited abject humiliation.
As the 1990s rolled around, television turned on Her Majesty, first when Prince Charles confessed to the world that his zipper had come undone during their marriage and a year later when Diana, Princess of Wales , staged his own prime-time inquisition.
Queen, 0: TV, 87.
But now comes the very bad news because television, the queen’s postmodern nemesis, is back to make her life hell, specifically Netflix. (Oh, and a book too.)
Take STUPID.
Sometime in November, the streaming giant, which has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value in recent months, will launch the fifth series of its highly dramatized, often creatively scripted royal soap. The Crown. While previous seasons have hardly been a walk in the park for the Queen, painting her family as damaged, repressed and animal-crazed, this year’s offering looks set to be a different kind of misery.
If there was ever a time period Her Majesty wouldn’t want to revisit, it would have to be the 1990s. Her favorite castle went up in flames (the Queen’s troubles didn’t she?), three of her four child marriages they broke up and she agreed, for the first time in history, that the sovereign would pay taxes. (And I still had all that fire damage to pay for, too.)
And that is, of course, exactly what comes next The Crown it will slavishly focus.
At the heart of this season will be none other than Diana, Princess of Wales and her Icarus-like flight from royal, marital martyr to a one-woman royal resistance force. Starring Australian Elizabeth Debicki as the doomed princess, the 10-episode arc will take viewers from the early 1990s, when she and her husband Prince Charles formally separated, to her shocking death in 1997 .
Most likely, Her Majesty’s treatment of the deeply troubled princess, her handling of the Welsh War and then the seismic aftershocks of her death are about to be depicted in high-definition technicolor.
For writers of The Crown, is rich pickings; for her majesty, I bet she’d rather endure a raw, non-vegan lunch with all of Prince Philip’s chinless German relatives than have all of this in front of a global audience.
The days leading up to Diana’s funeral in September 1997 are widely regarded as one of the lowest points of the Queen’s 70-year reign. She was simply insulted by a British public who saw a stony-hearted woman she had dealt with his princess wrong in life and death.
It would take years for this sad chapter to disappear into the rearview mirror, but now thanks to the creativity and nine-figure budgets of Netflix, this miserable episode is about to return to the public consciousness with a bang.
For those of us old enough to remember this time period, it will be a flashback to one of the darkest periods in the palace’s history, while for younger generations, they are already far less likely to support the monarchy ( and more likely to be sympathetic to the monarchy). Sussexes), this series will offer a crash course in some of the Queen’s biggest and coldest mistakes. They’re about to learn all about how the palace watched Diana suffer from an eating disorder, self-harm and, all the while, suffer within the claustrophobic confines of a miserable marriage.
However, I did say “shows,” and there’s more than one offering on Netflix’s fall slate that could spell serious trouble for the royals.
this week Page Six reported that the company wants to screen Harry and Meghan’s “at home” documentary series before the end of the year.
While several Windsors have written children’s books, given splashy interviews, graced magazine covers to talk about “new chapters” and appeared in carefully curated documentary outings over the years, they never, ever, a member of the royal family has opened its doors. for cameras for long periods of time.
If the Sussexes have accepted the TV series because they are very keen to promote themselves as humanitarians; whether this is some sort of political campaign launch on Meghan’s behalf; or if Netflix strong-armed them after paying truckloads of cash, for whatever reason (and there are probably many more) the Sussexes are about to break one of the last royal taboos.
Like David Attenborough crouching in the Serengeti, we could be about to encounter royals in the wild for the first time. (‘The Duchess opens the fridge; there’s no almond milk. Her mate the Duke is about to get an orphan…’)
Who won’t tune in to see the bloody intersection of the 21st century’s greatest contribution to cultural innovation – the reality series – and two obstreperous individuals who seem to have no problem talking about themselves?
The sticking point here for Buckingham Palace isn’t decency or protocol or some sort of aversion to publicity: it’s what Harry and Meghan might say, looking seriously down the barrel of a camera, about their family of back in the UK and what a novelty. bombs that could be about to drop on the queen.
Will we get to see footage of them looking distressed when they found out they’d be barred from the Buckingham Palace balcony during the platinum jubilee? Is it possible there was a crew on hand when it was revealed in February this year that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, would be Queen? You get the idea.
Quiet and tactful aren’t qualities we’ve seen from the Sussexes and with their possibly most valuable paymaster needing to be kept happy, what kind of mind-blowing revelations and revelations could be coming?
Neither the streaming service nor the couple can afford for this series not to be a huge success.
But before you take a breath here, remember that both of these series will theoretically come after Harry’s memoirs. (At the beginning of this month The sun raised the possibility that publication might be delayed since the title is not on the publisher’s list of new books, but Penguin Random House backtracked, saying, “We don’t list all books”).
Even more so than his docuseries, how much Harry could be about to unleash on his upbringing and life within what he has previously described as “a mix between The Truman Show and live in a zoo”? It seems highly unlikely based on his past form when it comes to talking about his family that it will be a warm and loving game down memory lane.
Note here, the weather. These three big releases, the two Netflix series and the book, are reported to be landing back-to-back and within a span of possibly only 60 days or so.
let’s get together The Crownthe Sussexes’ TV series and Harry’s memoirs have the makings of a PR bloodbath for the palace.
While all these exits are only half as bad as they could be, the impact on London could be devastating.
At stake are all the winnings that the queen and company. have done in the decades since Diana’s time, from the public’s careful preparation for Charles and Camilla to take the throne, to the push, led by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, to reposition the monarchy as a really useful and relevant entity. part of modern British life.
Even without the prospect of a new round of dirty laundry in the air or the Sussexes appearing on television screens, this is already a dubious time for the monarchy. The firm has barely managed to overcome the horrors of Prince Andrew’s fall from grace, the melodramatic Megxit and the Queen’s mysterious health problems.
How much more can the monarchy take before it all comes crashing down? How many more successes can the royal house sustain and maintain?
Here we leave you a detail related to television. During the pandemic, the Queen stepped up line of duty from his drawing room in Windsor. Wondering why a series about nefarious forces within a proud institution resonated so much?
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with over 15 years’ experience working with several of Australia’s leading media titles.