The Crown Epde 1 How To Observe It

Nor do we see the grief of the dead kings wife, suddenly the queen mother. Instead Mr. Daldry shows a household suddenly in motion as the news sweeps through Sandringham first the shock, then the running, running through the corridors, the queen mother still in her nightdress, everyone running toward the death chamber except the queens younger sister, Princess Margaret, who stands in a stricken eddy of silence, her grief double-edged: not only for the loss of her father, the king, but for fear she will also have to say goodbye to his closest aide, the married group captain Peter Townsend, with whom she has fallen hopelessly in love.

As we saw from the success of Downton Abbey, the reassuring rigidities of the British class system can do wonders for angsty Americans.

If youre grossed out by the utter charmlessness and moral squalor of a years worth of debased political self-indulgence, a perfect antidote is The Crown, Netflixs compulsively watchable dramatization of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, served up on a silver platter by dramatist Peter Morgan (The Queen) and the director and producer Stephen Daldry (The Audience).

Image John Lithgow and Harriet Walter in The Crown.

Credit. Alex BaileyNetflix Instead of sitting with an ice pack on your head and listening to John King yakking on CNN about red and blue paths to victory, revel in John Lithgows droll old war horse, Winston Churchill, as he makes his imperial progress up the aisle at Westminster Abbey.

Notice how augustly the patriotic hero takes his seat in a pew next to his sanely amused, age-appropriate wife, Clemmie, at the wedding of the young Princess Elizabeth to Lt.

Philip Mountbatten of the Royal Navy, formerly the Prince of Greece and Denmark and newly the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich.

Instead of ranting about the leaking and the belching and defaming of email leaks and social media, experience the private courage the crushing, unexpressed pain of the 56-year-old King George VI, played with quiet depth and range by Jared Harris (best known as the tormented Lane Pryce in Mad Men).

Shudder as he begins to realize that his blood-flecked cough is a death sentence hidden from him by his own doctors and struggles with what that will mean for the British constitution and his own beloved family.

Image Jared Harris in The Crown.

Credit. Alex BaileyNetflix The marvel of both Mr.

Morgans versatile script is how much unspoken emotion is communicated to the audience.

One of the most memorable scenes from the opening episodes is the kings private conversation on a duck-hunting excursion at Sandringham, the royals Norfolk estate, with his young son-in-law Prince Philip.

Without ever hinting that his own health is failing, the king tries to explain to Philip in the gathering mist the burden of duty that awaits him now that he is married to the young woman who will be queen.

She is the job, he tells a quizzical Philip with the intensity of impending death.

Loving her. Protecting her.

And her Her Royal Highness is the most refreshing moral counterpoint of all.

In the first two episodes, Mr.

Daldry achieves something unusual: He tells the story of Elizabeth II through the prism of being unprepared.

Her character is formed by being forced to rise to an occasion.

We see hints of her grounded certainties in her instant attraction to Philip.

The Crown Epde 1 How To Observe It

She wants this dazzlingly alpha young naval officer, who mocks the pomp of royal ceremony while always knowing how to observe it.

When the king, knowing he is too sick to undertake a monthslong commonwealth tour, asks her if she, a young mother of two, will take his place, she unhesitatingly agrees, despite Philips resistance to abandoning his own promising naval career.

Image Claire Foy and Matt Smith in The Crown.

Credit. Alex BaileyNetflix And what about the children Theyre too young to notice, she says firmly, a line that signifies her first acceptance of a lifetimes distancing between her own desires and the needs of her country, along with the collateral damage that will inevitably follow.

I think of the famously poignant moment when the 5-year-old Prince Charles greeted his mother after a six-month absence on a royal tour in 1953, not with a hug but a grave, extended handshake.) As Philip, Matt Smith (an erstwhile Doctor of Doctor Who) has great chemistry with Ms.

Foys Elizabeth. He has just the right combination of rippling impatience and dangerous, masculine self-confidence for a consort whose loyalty is laced with a sometimes heedless power to cause her pain.

The real triumph of the first two episodes of The Crown is the unerring emotional focus of Mr.

Daldry, the director.

He finds the heart in every scene and takes us into the interior world of people so famous and so familiar they have drained into stereotypes and gesture.

He makes us care so much I winced every time the king dragged deeply on one of the lethal cigarettes to which he was addicted.

And The Crown has plenty of that, from the jarring opening image of a toilet bowl flushing blood from the kings diseased lungs to the soaring, saturated scenes in Westminster Abbey as the packed congregation sings I Vow to Thee My Country over a thundering organ.

Netflixs hundred-million-dollar budget is, as they say, all up on the screen.) But Sam Spiegel once told me that the biggest challenge in making Lawrence of Arabia was to not let the sand overwhelm the movie.

Mr. Daldry could have let pageantry overwhelm The Crown, or allowed it to slide into costume drama.

Image A scene from The Crown.

Credit. Alex BaileyNetflix When the young queen, far away with Philip in Kenya on the royal tour at the idyllic wildlife retreat Treetops, is brought the news that the king has died, Mr.

Daldry does not give us her reaction.

We see her as her aides would at a distance, held in Philips embrace on the lawn.

Nor do we see the grief of the dead kings wife, suddenly the queen mother.

Instead Mr. Daldry shows a household suddenly in motion as the news sweeps through Sandringham first the shock, then the running, running through the corridors, the queen mother still in her nightdress, everyone running toward the death chamber except the queens younger sister, Princess Margaret, who stands in a stricken eddy of silence, her grief double-edged: not only for the loss of her father, the king, but for fear she will also have to say goodbye to his closest aide, the married group captain Peter Townsend, with whom she has fallen hopelessly in love.

The Crown Episode 1