TV review: The Crown. Season 5. Episode 2: The System

Di another day: The Princess (Elizabeth Debicki) spills the beans.

Bad news for fans of Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II: she’s barely in this episode at all, appearing only fairly briefly at the start and again towards the end. She is, for the most part, Queen Unseen. Queen but not heard.

Never mind: instead, we get lots about Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and old Phillip (Jonathan Pryce). Diana is hanging out a lot with her fried, Dr. James Colhurst (Oliver Chris) who acts as an intermediary between her and author, Andrew Morton (Andrew Steele) as she provides first hand material for his sensational warts-and-all biography of her, Diana: Her True Story.

The Duke of Edinburgh, meanwhile, is indulging his love of carriage-riding with family friend, Lady Penny Knatchbull (Truman Show actress, Natascha McElhone). Yes, you heard me: carriage riding. Apparently, this isn’t just something people in 1820 used to do, but a genuine hobby which rich people like to do today: restoring and then riding about in old carriages. Each to their own, I suppose.

But hang on a mo! Lady Penny is much younger than the old Duke and very attractive. Does the Queen not mind about this? Well, fear not, it all seems to be perfectly innocent. The two do achieve a genuine sense of intimacy, but not in a rude way. In a sudden burst of story, Penny does reveal to Philip what Di’s been up to. Philip is annoyed and arranges to meet with Diana and gives her a friendly warning. Don’t rock the boat, he says. And, for once, he doesn’t mean the Royal Yacht, Britannia.

But it’s too late to cancel the book now and anyway Diana doesn’t want to. This seems to mark the point where Diana goes rogue.

The Crown. Season 3, Episode 7: Moondust

In July 1969, man finally walked on the Moon. It was an astonishing achievement, the summit of human accomplishment. Even today, many of the world’s stupidest people still struggle to comprehend that it actually really happened.

The Apollo 11 landings had many consequences. One important one, often overlooked, is that they seem to have caused the Duke of Edinburgh to have a mid-life crisis. At least, that’s what The Crown says anyway.

From the outset, Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies) is mesmerised by the media coverage of the Apollo mission. This is portrayed as coinciding with a loss of faith he was experiencing. At one point, during a journey in a private plane, he terrifies his co-pilot by taking the controls and flying to a dangerously high altitude. It as if he is intent on launching an impossible mission to go to the Moon himself, his own life having been eclipsed by the Queen’s.

On another occasion, he is rude to a bunch of vicars, (one of whom, is incidentally, played by the great comic actor, Kevin Eldon, in a rare straight role). Later, he meets the three astronauts who have now returned from space. He meets Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin anyway: Michael Collins is made to wait in the car outside (only joking). Although he is awe of their achievement, Philip is disappointed by their conversation, apparently regarding them as mediocre. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he reflects. “I was expecting them to be giants, gods. In the end they were just three little men. Pale-faced, with colds.”

To the viewer, of course, it is only Philip who seems like the dull one. It is unclear why he is so annoyed that the spacemen have colds (as they apparently really did have, when he met them in 1969), for example, as this is a perfectly human and unavoidable anyway. In a not always believable episode, however, the characterisation of Philip as a frequently rude and ill-tempered man is, however, only too plausible.

In the end, the Duke befriends Dean Robin Woods (Tim McMullan) and finds the courage to ask for help in his quest to find his own personal sea of tranquillity.

One giant leap for the Duke? Perhaps not. But it’s certainly one small step for the man.