Another year, another installment of The Crown. The series, which started in 2016, has been a cash cow for Netflix. But the end is in sight. The first four episodes of the sixth season went out to the world on Nov. 16; the last six are scheduled to drop on Dec. 14, and then it’ll finally be over.
It’s been a big success for everybody involved. But the guy who’s really made bank on this thing is Peter Morgan. I paid tribute to him last year at about this time, when season five was released. But forgive me if I feel compelled once again to express my admiration for this fellow who, many years ago, realized something nobody else had: there were big bucks in the story of the House of Windsor.
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He started off by writing the 2006 movie The Queen, for which Helen Mirren won an Oscar as Queen Elizabeth II. He moved on to the 2013 play The Audience, in which Mirren again played the queen. Lesser minds might have moved on. But Morgan was just getting warmed up. He knew there was plenty more gold in them thar hills.
And so he created The Crown. Ka-ching!
To be sure, if your gig is slinging royal dirt, you’ve got one big problem right at the get-go: the Windsors’ famous love of privacy. How, in other words, to know who really said what to whom in the bedrooms and drawing rooms of Buckingham Palace and Balmoral? No problemo! Morgan operates by the rule: If you don’t know what went on behind closed doors, make it up — the juicier the better.
He shows off this talent very impressively in the four new episodes of The Crown. These episodes, I should mention, deal with the weeks surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales — the same stretch of time covered in The Queen. The difference is that while we never saw Diana in The Queen, she’s all over The Crown. In season 4 she was played by Emma Corrin; in seasons 5 and 6, by Elizabeth Debicki. Both are great in the role — which is to say that they both have the right hairdo and they both constantly hold their heads down in that special Diana way, as if they’re looking for coins on the sidewalk.
Anyway, about Morgan’s gift for invention. These four new episodes are full of scenes involving just Diana and Dodi Fayed, the playboy son of tycoon Mohamed al-Fayed, and of phone calls between Dodi and his dad. Nobody knows what these people said on these occasions. But Morgan doesn’t let that stop him. He shows Mohamed pushing Dodi to wed the recently divorced Diana so that he, Mohamed (owner of the chic Harrods department store in London), can finally wangle British citizenship. We also see Dodi picking out a wedding ring and proposing to Diana at the Ritz in Paris (also owned by his dad), only to receive a firm “no” — followed by a serious conversation in which he and Diana open up to each other about what they really want out of life and about the personal flaws that are keeping them from achieving what they really want.
It’s actually a great scene. Really revealing. And you can be sure that not a bit of it ever happened. But boy, can Peter Morgan spin a tale.
And boy, can he keep the suspense going, which is the real accomplishment here. Let me explain. Season six opens with a fellow in Paris who’s walking his dog late at night when a black car speeds by and into a tunnel — followed by a horrible crashing noise. We then jump back several weeks and see Diana and her sons enjoying the summer on the Côte d’Azur.
We all know what’s coming. But most of us don’t remember the exact timeline. So the suspense isn’t about what will happen but when it will happen. At one point, the boys having returned to the U.K., Dodi and Diana fly to Paris. Oh, is this going to be the fatal moment? No, not yet. Instead, they return to the Riviera for more fun in the sun. Eventually Diana announces that she’s arranged to fly commercial to London to be with the boys. Dodi won’t have it: he insists on flying her home on his dad’s jet. And then — the fatal twist — he talks her into a Paris stopover. They check in at the Ritz and then drive off. Oh, is this it? No, not quite yet. They end up back at the Ritz and have that totally imaginary heart-to-heart conversation.
And — well — then they leave the Ritz. Dodi’s bodyguard, Trevor, warns him against it: too many paparazzi! If Dodi had listened, he could’ve saved their lives. But instead he brushes Trevor off. Then we see the chauffeur, Henri, at the Ritz bar, throwing back what’s obviously the last of several drinks. Uh-oh.
Morgan really knows how to pile it on — and drag it out. The previous seasons of The Crown have actually offered some powerful moments — I think especially of the episode about the deadly 1966 disaster at a coal mine in Aberfan, Wales — but these four new episodes? They’re just plain death porn. They almost make Kenneth Anger’s notorious 1965 book Hollywood Babylon — which, for public delectation, served up gruesome stories and photos of Tinseltown depravity, death, and decapitation — look like Little House on the Prairie.
And to top it all off, Morgan, as noted, has been over this territory before. This is the second time he’s written a scene in which Prince Charles breaks the tragic news to his sons. It’s the second time he’s written a scene in which Charles enters the room in the Paris hospital that contains Diana’s corpse. It’s the second time Morgan has given us a scene in which the queen goes on television to express her grief about Diana’s death. Of course Morgan didn’t even write this bit — the queen herself did. So in The Crown we’re treated to the weird experience of seeing Imelda Staunton read exactly the same lines that Helen Mirren read before her, and that the real queen herself read before that.
Watching these ghastly scenes unfold, and realizing that Morgan could have wrapped this series up last year before it cycled into the same territory he covered in The Queen, one finds oneself wondering: has Morgan returned to this material out of sheer avarice, in the manner of any sleazy but honest workaday pornographer? Or — even worse — does he actually feel compelled, in some disturbing, creepy, morbid way, to return to, to reimagine, and to ogle once again these macabre private moments?
All of which leaves us with one final question: now what? At this point it’s hard to picture Morgan walking away from the Windsors. But what’s left to him now? A movie about Harry and Meghan? No, they’re old news. The Charles and Camilla love story? Sorry, but nobody’s about to green-light that.
But the public’s fascination with Diana is something else again. As Morgan is well aware, it knows no limits. And the last of the four new episodes provides a clue about what his next step might be. After Diana and Dodi perish in that Paris tunnel, Mohamed al-Fayed is grieving in his office — only to have Dodi’s ghost turn up and engage him in conversation. Then Diana’s ghost materializes opposite Charles on the plane back to London from Paris. She also drops in on the queen. Even in death, she hasn’t given up on that trademark head tilt.
My first reaction was that this was, quite simply, an absolutely terrible idea — a desperate attempt to make this chunk of The Crown different in some way from The Queen. But then it hit me. Maybe these ghoulish scenes were a tip-off as to where Morgan is going from here: a series about Ghost Diana. Maybe she’ll visit old friends — imagine the ratings of the episodes in which she hangs with Elton John and Liza Minnelli! Or maybe Ghost Diana will solve crimes?
The possibilities are limitless. And the ability of Peter Morgan to concoct stories about the royals out of whole cloth knows no bounds. Certainly not when it comes to decency.
