New cast impress as Netflix favourite The Crown returns for third season of royal intrigue
- Olivia Colman plays the queen, and Helena Bonham Carter portrays Princess Margaret in the new series of The Crown
- The royals come to terms with midlife crises, class differences and dealing with public perception
Netflix’s The Crown is back for a third season in top form after a wait of two years, which is still not as long as the wait for some kind of solution to Brexit. It has a great new cast (whose performances are equal if not better than their predecessors) and a brisk, almost urgent sense of galloping through the long life story of Queen Elizabeth.
As before, it’s a show to savour – every drop of it. Ten episodes, opening a few months before the death of Winston Churchill in 1965 and ending with the queen’s 25th jubilee in 1977, can easily seem like never enough, even when a couple of episodes start to wheeze toward the end.
Played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite), this queen becomes the far more recognisable stalwart, the stiffest upper lip in the United Kingdom, so sparing in her interactions that even she wonders whether she might have some sort of social anxiety disorder.
She fantasises about a life in which she has to care only about her racehorses. As envisioned by creator Peter Morgan and his team, The Crown’s greatest strength is the way it richly imagines those private moments that no one ever saw. We’re here because the suffering is so rarefied. Oh, these poor, poor souls who must go their entire lives doubting their God-given right to a cloudy day.
