Peter Townsend (now played by Timothy Dalton) comes back into Margaret's life while a fire devastates Windsor Castle, prompting the queen to give an iconic ...
• After Anne tells her mother that she’s going to marry Tim no matter what, she makes a point of kissing him in front of the help. But when the Queen Mother critiques the draft, Philip jumps in to defend his wife, arguing she deserves to express herself and have peace of mind. The symbolism of a castle burning feels a little on the nose in this time of turbulence and crisis, but hey, She talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury about her children’s collapsing marriages and feeling like she failed them as a parent. After all, Anne and Margaret have romantic situations that are more or less identical, but Anne is the only one who gets her happy ending. She suggests that maybe the fire was started by someone who could have a bone to pick with the queen. More than a hundred rooms are destroyed in the inferno, including the Crimson Room — a place where Margaret and Peter had shared fond memories together. At the reception, Peter and Margaret steal glances at each other from a respectable distance until a trumpet version of “Stardust” plays and he insists they dance. As the night winds down, Peter says he’ll be back in London soon and he’d like to return her letters, which he’s kept all this time. The queen is being a buzzkill partly due to insecurity she feels within her own marriage, but it’s frustrating to see Margaret’s joy tampered with, especially when Elizabeth drove a wedge between those two so many years ago. So when she, as a chain-smoking radio guest, says she still values her faith and the possibility of happy endings, it’s hard not to root for her. But this episode is at its most moving when it’s resurrecting a story from the very first season, courtesy of Princess Margaret (now played by Lesley Manville, picking up where Vanessa Kirby and then
With a new cast that includes Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, and Dominic West as Prince Charles, season 5 of ...
It was a good, but not great episode, and it’s indicative of a good, bot not great season. “It’s a situation that cannot help but to affect the stability of the country. Most Pilot-y Line: “The Prince of Wales, impatient for a bigger role in public life, fails to appreciate that his one great asset is his wife,” John Major says as he scornfully looks down at the young revelers partying at the Ghillies Ball. Still, it’s thrilling all the same to see new actors take the places of the old and honestly, if an episode about the queen’s love affair with her royal yacht is good, we can only hope that the really juicy stuff will indeed be great. West, Debicki, and Staunton were front and center in this episode offering fresh takes on characters we’ve grown attached to and it’s exciting to see how they’ll develop, but it’s also exciting to see what the show will do with Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Timothy Dalton as Peter Townsend, and Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker-Bowles. It’s fascinating to watch the new season with an eye toward the actors as they start to own the roles played by others in the past and see how they make them their own, too. Our Take: There’s so much at stake this season on The Crown, so much for this show to compare itself to. To make matters worse, a poll by the Times of London has also declared that the queen (who, let me remind you, will go on to rule for 32 more years) is a seen as too old to rule and out of touch, and half the British public think she should abdicate the throne and hand the reins to Prince Charles. And of course, there’s the Diana of it all. This season will be a test of not just how the show handles the subject matter, but how the actors stack up to their predecessors. In previous seasons, Charles has been portrayed as a simpering pawn in the royal line of succession. The show has always done a great job fictionalizing real events and every group of actors who has assumed the roles of the royals has set the bar incredibly high.