The Crown

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.

For four seasons, the show wove plots and emotions together to get to a point where it could thoughtfully dissect the meaning of all of it. Now, we’re here, and it has been well worth the wait.

Though nothing can rival the Emmy-winning 2020 chapters for best in series, Season 5 still proves an addictive blast of delicious palace intrigue. The new cast, led by Imelda Staunton as the Queen and a dynamite Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, will hold you spellbound.

While some of this season can feel more like setup for something bigger rather than standing on its own, The Crown remains as engrossing as ever. Again — it knows what it's doing.

As usual, the crown and its duties have a way of making everyone miserable. Except for the rapt viewer. [21 Nov - 4 Dec 2022, p.4]

Despite a slow start and some occasional missteps, Season 5 of The Crown proves to be as addictive and captivating as ever.

“The Crown” nevertheless remains as sumptuous and compulsively watchable as ever.

The fifth season really zings when the show turns a hard gaze toward the maddening ways that Elizabeth and her cohort refuse compassion and adaptation. But just as often, if not more often, The Crown cozies up to its subjects, bathes them in a reverent and affectionate glow. ... It’s almost cruel how effective Debicki is in the series, when we know what all her fascinating portraiture is heading toward.

At a time when seemingly every tabloid saga of the past half-century is getting adapted into an Emmy-bait miniseries, The Crown distinguishes itself by doing what it’s always done best: combining clear-eyed empathy, shrewd commentary and a refreshing intellectual curiosity into ten elegant hour-long episodes.

As in previous seasons, it's actually in the more contained episodes in which the show really shines.

I’m afraid the first three episodes are ditchwater dull. But here’s the good news. It gets better. Much better. And the absolute star is Elizabeth Debicki, whose performance as Princess Diana is at times freakishly good.

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.

Fine work all around.

While the pacing early on is somewhat erratic, and certain narrative elements fall on the clunkier side (see everything with Prince William), the performances remain riveting. ... The fifth season maintains the melodramatic antics that keep us wanting more.

Season 5 ... undermines the dramatic stakes with circuitous storytelling and choppier-than-usual pacing.

Much less of this season feels as revelatory as prior installments. It’s all still executed at a very high level, mind you.

The Crown has always been both a pleasure to watch, thanks to its lush production design and soapy undertones, and a more mixed success from an artistic standpoint. Season 5 is the same, but for different reasons. While the acting is no longer stellar across the board, and a vividly evoked Queen Elizabeth no longer dominates the story, the narrative itself becomes richer than ever.

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.

An uneven campaign that reinforces a sense the Emmy-winning series risks extending its reign too long.

This season is both more simplistic and less coherent, notably when dealing with Charles. ... Where the series continues to succeed is in its big-picture study of the crown’s relationship to national tides.

Compulsively watchable, as usual, but also on the reverential side. This "Crown" has no teeth.

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.

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.

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.

The mimicry can be grating when you're more familiar with the real thing. The pace and the cast aren't quite as finely tuned as the previous series either, though the good moments are still really, really good.

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.

[Imelda Staunton] is splendid. ... [Peter Morgan] writes episodes as self-contained morality tales, emphasizing the construction of complicated metaphors over the mundane business of building characters. So Staunton fades away at times, to the show’s detriment. ... Season 5 doesn’t have the life, the hard snap, of “The Crown” at its best. And that’s where Charles and Diana come in. West and Debicki are, in different ways, both fine in the roles. ... But the two characters at the center remain opaque.

Season Five is replete with terrific performances, especially from actors in recurring roles, but it’s no longer enough. Writer and creator Peter Morgan’s vision, like the monarchy circa 1990, is showing signs of strain.

The new season of "The Crown", which covers this tumultuous time in the Windsor clan, is more fine than good, blandly agreeable rather than stirringly risk-taking.

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.

Startling letdown. ... The season lacks narrative deftness and historic scale. ... Season 5 takes a more he-said, she-said approach to her [Diana's] marriage. The depiction rings true, though it lacks the camp and chaos that enlivened the previous version. ... Season 5 shies away from the inevitable; Dodi is smitten with a different spotlight-seeking blonde by its end. Because of that timidity (and the compressed time frame), the larger arc feels incomplete, structurally unsound.

These new episodes are bitty and often just boring, with [creator Peter] Morgan casting around for side plots to hide the fact that everything he has to say about the Windsors has already been said.

The reality is that The Crown ran out of steam a while ago. ... The longer it has gone on, the more it has assumed an exhaustive and soap operatic quality – not to mention that, in dedicating now two seasons to doomed lovers Charles and Diana, it has become increasingly tawdry. ... This penultimate season feels more insular, more gossipy, than ever.

For the most part, away from the grislier moments, this series suffers from being really quite boring.

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.