A man is walking his dog at night through the streets of Paris when he sees a car speed by. The vehicle enters the Alma Bridge tunnel and, as the citizen hears, it has an accident. He then calls the emergency services asking them to hurry up, which seems serious. It is the way that the sixth season of The Crown presents itself to the Netflix public: with a preview of the death of Diana Spencer.
As if the idea of his death was not in the minds of the viewer and the media, screenwriter Peter Morgan, always so decorous until now, places a shameless, gratuitous hook. The episode in question does not even narrate the last minutes of the life of the former Princess of Wales, but her tragic death is there as a claim. This scene, along with the first three episodes of the season, prove a reality for those who still harbored some hope: for The Crown, just as it happened before for the Windsor family, Diana has slipped through its fingers.
In the fifth season, there were already signs, especially with the episode dedicated to the annus horribilis of Elizabeth II on the 40th anniversary of her reign. Much of the north wing of Windsor Castle burned, naked photographs of Sarah Ferguson appeared in the tabloids, Prince Andrew separated and Princess Anne also made the same decision, and Diana published a biography when she was already living apart from Charles. All this happened and the creator was unable to focus all this dramatic potential on the character of the queen, providing one of the most boring episodes of the season.
This very ordinary treatment of Elizabeth was a surprise when one of the virtues of The Crown had always been the tension between person and symbol, humanity and indolence, and the extent to which the symbol must adapt to force in order to remain undisturbed. .
However, as if tired of the character of Isabel who wears the crown of the series' title, the fifth season only evoked intensity when Diana was on screen: the fascination of the citizenry, which made her the princess of the people, It was also present in the screenwriter's mind. Isn't it ironic if we take into account that, when Morgan wrote The Queen, he precisely erred on the side of empathizing extremely with Elizabeth?
Consequently, Imelda Staunton was greatly disappointed: she became the first Elizabeth from The Crown not to be nominated for an Emmy while Elizabeth Debicki, Diana in fiction, competes for the awards. The Australian actress had not only blended in with Lady Di but, to make matters worse, she had the show-off scenes, the ones that had a bang.
This transformation of The Crown does not mean that the episodes of the first half of the sixth season are bad. The production values at times almost cause a Stendhal syndrome due to the restrained elegance so characteristic of the series. Diana sitting alone on the diving board of Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht with the Mallorcan coast on the horizon is beauty.
The media war between Diana and Charles is cleverly shown, who is exasperated to legitimize Camila both in the face of British public opinion and with her parents. And, somewhat clumsily, Mohamed Al-Fayed is exposed as a kind of soap opera villain, locked in rooms while he calculates how to trap Diana through her son Dodi. But, in a fiction that tended to adapt the historical chronology at convenience to create chapters with solid and semi-independent scripts and thus cover around a decade per season, the series suffers the ravages of fascination.
It is not that Diana is unpleasant to see: a fascinating character is built, even if her beatification is tended without going through the chiaroscuros. It is not that the temporal codes that Morgan himself had applied are violated: the first three episodes barely cover a couple of months of the Windsors and, it must be admitted, they do not lose pace.
The problem is that, behind Diana's brilliance, there is an uncomfortable truth: The Crown has already grown bored with its queen, not knowing what to do with her, and Staunton may not be the right actress to restore the character's splendor and survive. the death of her daughter-in-law that led her down the path of bitterness.
