The reviews for The Crown season 5 are in, and critics are largely agreeing that this is the worst season for the series so far. The show, which is a dramatization of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, originally premiered with its first season on Netflix in 2016. The series has been running since then in two-season chunks, depicting a different period of the Queen's life with a different actress taking the lead role each time, starting with Claire Foy portraying the monarch during the very beginning of her reign, which lasted more than 70 years.
In The Crown seasons 3 and 4, the Queen was portrayed by Oscar winner Olivia Colman, surrounded by a brand-new ensemble cast as well. In The Crown season 5, as well as the upcoming sixth and final season, the role will be taken up by Harry Potter's Imelda Staunton. The new season, which drops on November 9, will be covering the various travails of the royal family in the 1990s, especially the high-profile divorce between Prince Charles (now King Charles III), played by Dominic West, and Princess Diana, played by Elizabeth Debicki.
Today, the embargo lifted on reviews of The Crown season 5, allowing critics to share their full thoughts on the upcoming episodes. Unfortunately for fans of the series, the general consensus seems to be that this is the weakest season the series has ever produced. While they almost universally praise Debicki's performance as Diana, many critics see the season's storytelling as either tawdry, haphazard, or both. Read selected quotes from various critics below:
Kristen Baldwin, EW:
We cannot expect The Crown to be an exhaustive record of the royal family's (fictionalized) life, but Morgan's regular detours prohibit any one storyline from gaining momentum.
Daniel D'Addario, Variety:
There’s a great deal of reign left — the death of Diana, the Blair decade, and the Iraq war lie ahead, along with who knows how much more modern cultural history. And the likely increase in pace and change in dynamic may help the show find its footing as it ends. But, to borrow a phrase from Queen Elizabeth’s own speech about her bad year, this is not a season on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. It’s a crisp line, communicating meaning about the state of mind and general attitude of the reserved person delivering it. Too bad Peter Morgan couldn’t let it speak for itself.
Kayleigh Donaldson, The Wrap:
Its biggest weaknesses continue to be moments of clunky exposition to explain historical details or side characters for American viewers and non-royal buffs. Names and tidbits are shoved into conversation with the subtlety of a Wikipedia entry.
Angie Han, THR:
The Crown‘s fifth season makes the case that it’s a conversation worth having — not by condemning the royals as incomprehensible monsters, but by offering them the grace of seeing them as simply human.
Carly Lane, Collider:
However, there's only so much that the show itself seems willing to take the monarchy to task for certain behaviors. Morgan's scripts frequently teeter between calling out the royal family for their out-of-touch behaviors and misguided spending habits, like calling on taxpayers to foot the bill for the Britannia's refurbishment, and shedding light on their charitable works or being sympathetic to their supposed plights, often within the very same episode.
Dominic Patten, Deadline:
Here, with his heir now the sovereign, West becomes an endless distraction as you watch the actor again and again attempt to contort himself into a character he simply is not and never should be... [And] like so much of this season of The Crown and unlike past PMs in the series, the expanse of the talented [Jonny Lee] Miller’s role and [John] Major’s service to the monarchy grind joylessly along as a gray cloud in a dark sky.
Ben Travers, IndieWire:
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.
All The Crown Season 5 Controversy Explained
It's possible that the negative attitude toward The Crown season 5 could be coming from the various controversies that have been swirling around this season. First and foremost, beyond simple Diana fatigue after a year that included Netflix's Diana: The Musical and Kristen Stewart in the biopic Spencer, several pop culture pundits and royal insiders have decried the season's use of Diana's divorce and death as a plot line. While the show revealed that they would not depict her death onscreen, they still came under fire for exploiting the tragedy.
The Crown has also recently come under fire from various high-profile sources for not presenting a historically accurate vision of Queen Elizabeth II's life, including Dame Judi Dench. This controversy led Netflix to add a disclaimer to the series describing it as a dramatization. It is possible that these controversies would not have seemed like such hot-button issues had Queen Elizabeth herself not passed away shortly before the season's premiere, but that is indeed the case, however, as it may have colored people's opinions of the show.
Source: Various (see above)