The Crown Review

The central insight is a good one and Morgan never lets go of it: the Queen's job is to have no opinions, and the drama therefore lives in everything she cannot say. Claire Foy plays that as a young woman discovering the size of the cage, and Olivia Colman plays it as middle aged resignation, and both are excellent in completely different registers. The supporting work is stronger still, particularly Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham Carter as a sister ruined by proximity to the throne, and Tobias Menzies as a consort with nothing to do.

Adriano Goldman shoots it with genuine film scale, and the money is visible in every corridor and coronation. Two objections stand. The later seasons, once the events are within living memory, become far more cautious and far less interesting, spreading themselves across a marriage the audience already knows the shape of. And the show routinely invents private scenes and presents them with documentary confidence, which is defensible drama and slippery history. The first three seasons are superb.