Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty / Netflix
As The Crown series trots on toward modern-day events, Netflix’s sumptuous masterpiece of royal history and tawdry gossip approaches its inevitable end point: basically becoming a Lifetime movie.
I don’t mean that to be trolling. That’s music to some fans’ ears, the sound of a city’s population of feral cats in heat gathered outside your bedroom to others. But it is a curious dissonance that has grown more noticeable with each passing season of The Crown.
Here is a show that defines prestige television. It is expensive. It is ornate. It has acting and design and history. What subject could encompass the idea of “prestige” more accurately than the actual queen? But, when you really distill it, The Crown is also just fancy tabloid-whispering, streaming on Netflix.