20
Feb
I love the show, The Crown on Netflix. The show follows the royal family starting in the 1930s and with King George VI’s death and his daughter Elizabeth becoming queen at the age of 25. The show is formatted to cover a decade of the queen’s life each season and was originally planned for 6 seasons. Seasons 1 and 2 explored the young queen’s adaptation to ruling a country, and to learning that the institution of the crown rules more than she does. And then we get into seasons 3 and 4 which explore a matured ruler, who knows when to sit back and let the institution do what it needs to do. We’re also introduced to Charles and Diana, who feel all too real and exciting because it wasn’t that long ago that their love story played out.
Season 5 is where things got crazy. As the show enters the 90s and begins to play out the drama between Charles and Diana’s divorce, it feels a little too close to home for many viewers. For people like me, pretty much every episode is new information about a time in my life when I wasn’t born or was a baby. But for viewers who lived through the 90s and remember much of what is covered in the show happening on the news and in the public eye, it feels a little too soon. Especially considering, spoiler alert, Diana’s untimely death. But since season 5 was released, things in the real life of the royal family have changed. The queen died in August of 2022, Charles became king, Harry and Megan’s documentary was released on Netflix, and Harry’s book Spare has been released, bringing the world more clarity on what has happened in the royal family over the last few years.
Many viewers want the show The Crown to continue past season 6 into seasons that cover the most recent years of monarchy, the 2010s and the 2020s. And I don’t blame them, the drama of the last few years would be epic television. Audiences want seasons 7 and 8 because the Crown has blurred the lines between historical period drama and sensational drama series. Viewers are caught up in the drama of the characters on the show and forget that they are real people with real lives. Viewers want to see how the show would handle the recent events of Harry and Megan leaving the royal family, and they want to know what scenes we’d get in the castle, behind closed doors that we can’t get in a documentary. Some people, myself included can easily take The Crown’s version of the story as fact, forgetting that it’s a narrative show and that not every detail is historically accurate.
And with so many of the plot lines and details being historically accurate, how can viewers know what’s true and what’s not? How can they remember as they are watching that the show is a drama series? I think like many viewers, I have my phone nearby the entire time I’m watching the show, and I’m often pausing the show to look something up on Google or read about it on Wikipedia. But reading the true facts, which do often line up with the show, only makes me believe what I’m watching even more, especially when so many of the shocking details are true and based on real events.
I am excited for the completion of The Crown with season 6, but in my opinion that is as far as the show should go. The closer the show gets to current events, the more harm the show is able to do for everyone involved. Not only will covering recent events harm Harry and Meghan, but it will also harm King Charles, Camilla, Prince William, Kate, and their family. With social media and the internet, most people have lived through the drama of the last few years and don’t need to see it play out in a show on Netflix.
And that brings us to my final issue with the show. Netflix is bringing in the money on all fronts by having the drama series The Crown and the documentary Harry and Megan. The two different shows likely have a large audience that overlaps, but they also likely have a portion of the audience that does not. There are probably some viewers who absolutely love the royal family and would never watch Harry and Megan, but they would watch The Crown. And there are likely some viewers who can’t stand period dramas so they wouldn’t watch The Crown, but they are here for the Harry and Meghan documentary. This is another reason I think the show should stop at season 6. Netflix doesn’t want to anger the portion of their audience that loves the royal family by giving light to Harry and Meghan’s side of the events of the last year within the show The Crown. It makes the best business sense for them to keep those two things separate, and allow their audience to engage with both or not.
I love the show The Crown, but I think it needs to remain a show.