The Crown

The show, created and written by Peter Morgan of “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon,” is thoroughly engaging, gorgeously shot, beautifully acted, rich in the historical events of postwar England, and designed with a sharp eye to psychological nuance.

A sumptuous, stately but never dull look inside the life of Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy).

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.

Netflix’s The Crown is a sumptuous treat, a lavish costume drama with subtle performances and an astonishing attention to detail.

The Crown easily rises far above, adding a cinematic quality to a complex and intricate time for an intimate family. The performers and creators are seemingly up for the task.

It's a smart, beautifully mounted, and at times very moving production.

We’re clearly meant to see the duke as a wastrel with heart. It doesn’t quite come off--Mr. Jennings is far too convincing as an empty-hearted scoundrel--but it’s a minor flaw in this superbly sustained work.

The Crown is as superb and heavy as, well, the actual crown.

The irony is that while Elizabeth is continually told to suppress her individuality for the sake of the monarchy, the marvelous The Crown renders her more fully human than ever. [7 - 20 Nov 2016, p.12]

As television it's excellent--beautifully mounted, movingly played and only mildly melodramatic.

Morgan and director-producer Stephen Daldry make the show engrossing both as history and as a drama about family ties.

What matters more is the way Morgan uses events--as small as Elizabeth's choice of a personal secretary and as large as her struggle to preserve the monarchy against duplicitous officials and her sister's need to "shine"--to illuminate Elizabeth and the country she rules. Those events may sometimes play out a bit slowly, but they're usually fascinating and they're never dull.

The first chapter of Peter Morgan's chronicle of the rule of Queen Elizabeth II remains gripping across the entirety of the 10 episodes made available to critics, finding both emotional heft in Elizabeth's youthful ascension and unexpected suspense in matters of courtly protocol and etiquette.

Like the subject it so lovingly examines, The Crown feels like an antique to be admired, even if its greater purpose becomes less clear with each passing hour.

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]

The Crown struggles at times, but there’s something within it — a slumbering beast, deep beneath its waves, just waiting to surface. You catch glimpses of it here and there--when Elizabeth betrays someone in the name of the crown, especially--and those glimpses are enough to animate this first season.

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.

Morgan dramatizes Elizabeth's life--he builds the narrative on a framework of public events but includes private exchanges and personal motives in a way that's entirely believable and doesn't feel in the least bit exploitative.

This is a thoughtful series that lingers over death rather than using it for shock value; one that finds its story lines in small power struggles rather than gruesome palace coups.

Pieces of The Crown are more brilliant on their own than they are as a series, taken in as shorter, intently focused films like “The Queen” and another Morgan achievement, the play and film versions of “Frost/Nixon.”

The Crown is a fascinating and easily engrossing portrait of a young monarch in a fairly modern age, and benefits from having one writer (creator Peter Morgan) to lend it narrative continuity.

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.

The show, in its best moments, is a perfect mix of pristine elegance and soap opera schlock, all while finding ways to string along its bingeing Netflix subjects through to the next slowly unfurling royal crisis.

In a drama that is prone to repetitive tangents, disconnected subplots and the liberal use of filler, Foy unites the disparate parts of The Crown and gives it a taut center.

Sumptuously produced but glacially told, The Crown is the TV equivalent of a long drive through the English countryside. The scenery keeps changing, but remains the same.

The show will be compared to Downton Abbey, but that late soap opera was able to invent ahistorical or at least unexpected notes of benevolence and wisdom among its upper-crust characters. Foy struggles mightily, but she’s given little: Avoiding her children, her husband, and her subjects in favor of meetings at which she either acquiesces to her advisors or puts off acquiescing until fifteen minutes later, The Crown’s Elizabeth is more than unknowable. She’s a bore.

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).