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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
143
Mixed:
34
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
Nov 7, 2022May 24, 2021
Nov 16, 2023Nov 8, 2022
Season 5 Review:
As it charts the royal family’s continued expulsion from their pedestal in season five, “The Crown” remains as superbly written and as addictive as ever. ... All of the new actors, like most of those before them, are extraordinary as they capture something genuine of the public figures they play. But it’s hard to see any continuity between Josh O’Connor, who evoked Charles so powerfully in season four, and Dominic West, who takes over the role.
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Nov 12, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Television acting doesn’t get much more nuanced and delectable than in those cool confrontations between the two powers [Gillian Anderson's Margaret Thatcher & Olivia Colman's Queen Elizabeth]. ... The opulent, epic, and yet intimate series returns to Netflix on Sunday with a particularly eventful and poignant fourth season. ... Watching the Charles and Diana saga play out in “The Crown,” I kept marveling at how successfully the material rises above previous scripted efforts to tell the story. Morgan elevates it all without screaming out the big themes — sexism, depression, the uselessness of love in the shadow of the crown.
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Nov 13, 2019
Season 3 Review:
I have seen the third season of “The Crown,” which will be available on Netflix on Sunday, and it is dazzling and excellent. It’s extraordinary historical TV. ... Often, streaming series feel more like season-long blurs than a series of distinct episodes. That is not the case with “The Crown,” as it tells its story as precisely and lavishly as anything on TV these days.
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Nov 9, 2022
Season 5 Review:
None of it builds to a larger thesis about these people or the institution itself. The impressively lavish settings can’t make up for the emptiness of the script. Scenes — and emotional arcs — don’t get a chance to play out, but flit from one location and set of characters to another.
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Nov 16, 2019
Season 3 Review:
The Crown ushers in a new cast, but the Netflix historical drama's compelling and regal formula -- exploring the obligations and indignities associated with the seemingly sun-drenched life of the British Royal Family -- remains the same, and indeed has only deepened as the principals advance into middle age.
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Nov 2, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The Crown is gorgeously produced, impeccably cast and deals with a tantalizing period in British history. It is also grindingly slow, and occasionally feels like it's recycling material previously covered in other movies and miniseries...The good outweighs the disclaimers, in a project that oozes class from every pore.
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ColliderNov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
In hindsight, the previous installment may have been even more of a herald for where the series would end up by its finale. Although there's still the last half of Season 6 left to weigh in on, it's more than safe to declare that The Crown has lost much of what initially made it shine.
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ColliderNov 5, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Season 5 boasts yet another cast change-up, with varying levels of success — some actors are clearly trying to immerse themselves into the real-life people they've been tasked with playing, while others toss out the occasional word in the royals' received pronunciation accent and strive for little beyond that.
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ColliderNov 9, 2020
ColliderNov 4, 2019
Season 3 Review:
The Crown distinguishes itself from other prestige television of the age through its willingness to still be episodic when the narrative calls for it, and in these standalone episodes showrunner Peter Morgan finds some of his strongest material. ... The Crown may put the “prestige” in “prestige television”, but it earns every dazzling moment.
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ColliderNov 21, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Like its first season, each new episode makes its mark and tells its own complete story, all while staying linked to Elizabeth’s journey as a monarch, mother, and wife. It’s another exceptionally strong season of television, full of compelling drama and sweeping grandeur.
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Nov 5, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Few series have had the opportunity to truly capture the passing of half a century like The Crown has, and for that alone it’ll be remembered as one of 21st-century television’s most impressive achievements. And the all-star cast is as solid as the one which preceded it — it really remains impressive, how the show has consistently brought in such a high caliber of talent with each change-up.
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Nov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
If the writing on The Crown Season 6 Part 1 falls a bit short where it counts the most, the cast at least delivers the goods. Imelda Staunton is still the most ineffectual Queen Elizabeth II the show’s produced, but she’s no longer in the spotlight, so it’s fine. Instead, The Crown Season 6 Part 1 belongs to Princess Diana and Elizabeth Debicki.
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Nov 6, 2022
Season 5 Review:
It’s an uneven, uninspiring season of television that fails to live up to the high standard of past seasons. ... It’s not all disastrous, though; there are some excellent things about this season, too. Namely, Lesley Manville’s Princess Margaret. ... Key members of the new ensemble cast feel like downgrades from the Emmy-winning stars of seasons past.
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Nov 9, 2020
Season 4 Review:
The Charles and Diana soap opera shines in part because of its built-in cache, but mostly because Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin are the season’s standouts. ... Less impressive is Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher. ... But it’s a credit to showrunner Peter Morgan and Emma Corrin herself that Princess Di doesn’t takeover the entire show. There are still standalone episodes devoted to peculiar moments for the monarchy.
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Nov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
Chronicling Diana and Dodi’s brief romance and shocking death in a Paris car chase, Peter Morgan’s historical drama takes a wistful, careful, and restrained approach to one of the modern-day royal family’s most momentous tragedies. .... Chronicling Diana and Dodi’s brief romance and shocking death in a Paris car chase, Peter Morgan’s historical drama takes a wistful, careful, and restrained approach to one of the modern-day royal family’s most momentous tragedies.
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Nov 9, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Corrin handles the burden of portraying Diana — one of the most beloved public figures of the 20th century — admirably. ... O’Connor is uncannily skilled at portraying the prince’s chimeric moods — the arrogance and entitlement, the hangdog malaise, the insecurity and yearning. ... It’s a season of next-level performances, really. Anderson’s turn as Thatcher is so viscerally physical. ... She is transformed.
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Nov 5, 2019
Season 3 Review:
At its heart, The Crown is a catalogue of the myriad ways Elizabeth must deny her true self out of duty to her country. It’s a theme that’s at once tragic and predictable, which makes the emergence of Prince Charles and Princess Anne as more prominent players all the more welcome.
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Oct 31, 2016
Season 1 Review:
What may at first seem too-familiar story is in fact a surprising and compelling portrait of someone we all think we know. [4 Nov 2016, p.55]
iNov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
Perhaps the romance of William and Kate will feel like an injection of hope. But for now the whole exercise feels a bit pointless and sad, focused more on impersonations than entertainment. When The Crown finally comes to an end, I suspect we will feel not grief, but relief.
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IndieWireNov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
Yes, the audience knows it’s coming, but with each ominous reference and blatant tease, it becomes harder and harder to believe her final days were anything like this. Forgetting verisimilitude, it also makes for vapid drama. “The Crown” is so preoccupied with one of the Royal family’s most infamous tragedies, it does little to develop anyone else.
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IndieWireNov 5, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Despite scripts that toil through the pulpy details of a very public divorce, strong design work on every level, and enlivening portrayals from the fresh ensemble (Lesley Manville is so good in her criminally truncated time as Princess Margaret), “The Crown” Season 5 suffers from a narrowed point of view.
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IndieWireNov 9, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Colman is now allowed to own the monarch’s authority in her performance. And with foils like Anderson and Corrin, all three turn in very brittle and beautiful performances. ... Beyond reveling in the tawdry candy-colored tale of Charles and Di, Morgan’s writing on the show routinely explores notions of classicism, privilege, sexism, and racism. But this time around, the undercurrents surface in a way that is timely, incisive, and, ultimately, more pointed and hopeful.
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IndieWireNov 4, 2019
Season 3 Review:
What is on the screen in “The Crown” is a gorgeous display of some of the age’s best actors performing at the peak of their craft. ... And yet, Colman is relegated to reacting more than acting because of how her role is written. ... [Queen Elizabeth is] a complex sovereign in a complex time, the defender of the faith. Morgan should show some more faith in her himself.
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IndieWireNov 21, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Some viewers may look for exactly this in their television: a beautiful recreation of historical events, connected by safe assumptions about the people who lived through them. But television is capable of so much more, and whether you like The Crown or not, its medium evokes stronger, richer feelings elsewhere.
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Dec 7, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Foy has no problem filling the void left by Lithgow’s Churchill with another stellar performance that builds upon the experience and confidence Elizabeth gained last season. ... Elizabeth’s personal life, Philip’s identity crisis and the geopolitics of the era are seamlessly triangulated here.
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Nov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
The Crown limits Elizabeth Debicki to a carefully outlined, inoffensive portrait. As they pass the children between each other, she and Dominic West invest a rueful, grown-up sadness into a failed relationship, but separately they tend to fall into predictable choices.
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Nov 9, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Absorbing but choppy fifth go-round. While it depicts tumultuous and unpredictable times for the royal family, it also presents some of the members of that family in ways that seem inconsistent with what we’ve come to expect from them, both within the context of this series and in the real world.
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Nov 10, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Together, Thatcher and Diana give The Crown an energy and a sense of direction it lacked in the third season, and a feeling of verve the show has arguably never approached before. In the writing and in the performances, there is this sense that everyone involved has finally gotten to the good stuff, and they’re all pleased as punch about it.
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Nov 3, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The Crown never entirely figures out how to make the political and domestic drama genuinely dramatic, much less bestow complexity on characters outside England’s innermost circle (the scenes of Philip and Elizabeth in Kenya, in particularly, are face-palm condescending).
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Nov 12, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Stiff of spine and thin of voice, this Elizabeth (played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman) may make you long for the incandescent Claire Foy ... The history lessons check some necessary boxes — Churchill (John Lithgow) goes to his eternal reward in Episode 1 — but also resurrect delicious bits that may have been forgotten. ... With an ever-present cigarette holder and air of hangover chic, Margaret is a free spirit trapped by the rules of the palace, and her contrast with Elizabeth is something Morgan returns to again and again with striking results.
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Nov 11, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Yes, there are two big stories this season, but the one about Thatcher — Anderson, like Corrin, is brilliant, by the way — doesn't stand a chance opposite the other. Charles and Diana: Tragic characters straight out of Shakespeare, one whose blood runs cold, the other whose "passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love," to steal a line from another play. ... Best season yet.
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Dec 6, 2017
Season 2 Review:
The first season was initially hagiography masking as a high-end TV series, but the second season is Vanity Fair, full of characters, life, humor, passion and buttered scones. Morgan not only has a series to match his 2006 Oscar-winning movie, “The Queen,” but finally one to exceed it. The Crown--the second season, anyway--is magnificent.
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Nov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
While the first half of the season may make an excellent Diana miniseries, it’s not entirely clear that it works as a concluding installment of The Crown, a show that once had a much more sweeping scope and grander ambitions than what often comes across as simple stenography. (Or propaganda, depending on how you feel about the wildly friendly edit this season gives Charles, who is, after all, now King of England.)
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Nov 9, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Marketing and storytelling both seem to focus on the three women in power at the heart of the season, but it’s very uncertain what Morgan is really looking to say about them or their connection to one another. ... Despite this, and some unforgivably heavy-handed visual juxtapositions throughout, The Crown is still an engrossing chronicle of House Windsor—most especially when its scope is small. That is thanks largely to the exceptionalism of its cast.
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RogerEbert.comNov 15, 2019
Season 3 Review:
More uneven than its two predecessors, but also more daring and surprising. When it works, it’s incredibly compelling, once again solidifying itself as one of the best shows of the year; when it doesn’t, it’s merely one of the best acting ensembles anywhere, moving about in a series that’s as richly designed, expertly directed, and satisfyingly paced as anything else in television.
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RogerEbert.comDec 7, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Clearly, The Crown doesn’t come close to experiencing a second-season slump. In some ways, it tops the highs achieved in its initial run, building on the already-complex relationships between Elizabeth, Philip, Margaret, the Queen Mother, and other members of the Royal Family and their retinue to create something even more layered and rich.
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Nov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
There was perhaps no way to gracefully cover this part of the story, not even in the earlier days when Morgan was able to view the whole complicated picture from 30,000 feet up. But now that he’s emotionally embedded himself so deeply into this world, it feels like an impossible task, and one where The Crown, like its queen, is not entirely sure how to address.
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Nov 12, 2019
Season 3 Review:
At this phase of the story, Elizabeth is more uptight and controlling than ever, especially now that some of her children are old enough to cause her problems in the way only her sister once did. But the job and the many ugly things she has to do in it weigh on her more than ever, which Colman portrays beautifully. It’s not a thrilling time for Elizabeth, or The Crown, but it’s a complicated transition handled quite deftly.
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Nov 16, 2020
Season 4 Review:
[Gillian Anderson's] introductory moments are entirely over the top and verging on cringeworthy, to the point that it nearly looks and sounds like her jaw might break off. But she soon relaxes her grip on Thatcher's mannerisms, and what emerges afterward is nothing short of masterful. Corrin immediately achieves a balance between the coquette and energetic idealist we picture Diana to be. ... Both Corrin's and Anderson's representations define this section of the Queen's life in ways that transform "The Crown" and our view of Elizabeth and our estimation of who these people are.
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Nov 18, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Probably the only series in television to have fully mastered the balancing act between slow meditative storytelling and emotional drag. This only becomes more the case as the story enters the middle years of Queen Elizabeth, played with steely, boundless soul by Oscar winner Olivia Colman. ... And “The Crown” does so with true dignity, inviting us to sit for a while, attentively and with appreciation, within its assured spell of calm.
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Dec 11, 2017
Nov 8, 2022
Season 5 Review:
The twin specters of grief and dread loom over the entire season. I felt my breath catch with emotion when I caught the first glimpse of Elizabeth Debicki as a still-hopeful, still-married Diana in the season five premiere. ... At times, I caught myself feeling empathy for the show’s progressively frustrated Prince Charles — or rather, the dramatized character that a brilliant Dominic West brought to life with surprising effect, even if he is far too handsome for the role.
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Dec 5, 2017
Season 2 Review:
The new season is even more engaging that the first. The other reasons include Morgan’s writing, spot-on direction from Stephen Daldry, Philip Martin, Benjamin Caron and others, and superb performances at almost every level. ... The fact that it’s one of the best shows in town is just the jewel in The Crown.
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Nov 16, 2020
Nov 6, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Season three of The Crown lacks the urgency that previously made the Netflix series so engaging. This is partly due to the more subdued relationships between the older members of the House of Windsor, now settled into their various roles as sovereign, husband, sister, and wife.
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SlashfilmNov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
As it nears its endgame, the show has become more serialized, particularly with these four episodes that make up the first half of the final season, all of which run into each other. I'm not quite sure that's a good thing, as it robs the series of much of its previous strength. Still, there's enough high drama packed into these four episodes to satisfy those of us who have stuck with the show over all these years.
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Nov 15, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Colman intuits that Elizabeth, at the height of her powers and in the middle of a calm stretch, is content. The performance is both believable and emotionally astute: Elizabeth would be settled and comfortable. But this, along with the equilibrium in her marriage, snuffs out some of the little tension there used to be. ... That the show remains appealing through this relatively slow going is largely thanks to the more high-strung characters surrounding Elizabeth.
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Dec 6, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Cautiousness, propriety, and dowdiness have never seemed more soothing. Elizabeth remains the commonsense counterpoint to the flibbertigibbets around her, but she is now comfortable in her authority. Each episode is not a lesson in personal abnegation; instead, the new season mixes episodes about contained political events--an encounter with the Kennedys, a crisis caused by a vocal critic, the Duke of Windsor’s Nazi affiliations--with the really good gossip
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Nov 2, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The Crown is as beautifully filmed as could be, with scenes in Malta and Kenya as well as Balmoral in Scotland. The costuming is meticulous, as is the choreography of everything from dressing to mealtime to a train trip. Deliberate pacing (naysayers might say slow) allows time to appreciate all this.
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Nov 16, 2023
Season 6 Review:
Interesting choices are almost completely absent in the first part of season six, with the exception of two different photographers serving as a framing device for episode two (not coincidentally the standout). In the brief moments that attention isn’t on Diana, we’re rehashing the same old stuff.
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Nov 11, 2022
Season 5 Review:
Even with an impressive and capable new cast anchoring the proceedings, Morgan’s approach to the personal lives of the royals is too sympathetic to ever be damning. The new season of The Crown never risks challenging anyone’s reputation. Instead, it merely risks its own as a compelling show.
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Nov 18, 2019
Season 3 Review:
A character who, in Season 3, is becoming more and more unknowable. ... Colman, an indubitably brilliant actor, brings more of herself to the part than Foy did, but she’s able to capture the markedly divergent aspects of a woman who’s a wife, a mother, and a monarch in a long line of failures.
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Dec 11, 2017
Season 2 Review:
This personal, complex portrayal of a monarch who by her own admission in the show would rather be living any other life is riveting enough. But The Crown is also a history lesson, as my colleague David Sims has put it, albeit a selective one. It’s gorgeously shot, with flawless re-creations of everything from the Throne Room in Buckingham Palace to a 1950s hospital ward. And it’s surprisingly funny.
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Nov 4, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The Crown is sometimes too somber, and slow-moving to a fault (it intends to cover Elizabeth’s entire reign over six seasons). But if you’re looking for an immersive history lesson with all the royal trimmings (ermine and purple velvet among them), it’s an extremely engrossing watch.
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The Daily BeastNov 9, 2022
Season 5 Review:
There’s a sense this time around of, “Get to the good stuff!” The frustrating thing, I’m sure, is that there is no blame to be assigned to the series for that. The Crown is as engrossing (and endlessly watchable) as ever. The subject matter is the culprit. That said, the show does seem to be leaning into that obviousness in a way it never did before.
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