Netflixs The Crown is distasteful – imagine turning on TV to see your dead mothers final days
Netflix's The Crown first came to our screens in 2016 and proved an instant hit as we awed at Claire Foy's depiction of a very young Queen Elizabeth II coming to terms with the death of her father and balancing her new role with her young family.
As well as Claire, the show sparkled with a bevvy of wonderful actors – such as Matt Smith as Prince Philip, Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret and Victoria Hamilton as the newly-widowed Queen Mother.
As time has gone by, the praise for the show has noticeably decreased as the timeline has edged closer to the present day and tackled subjects which have been very challenging for royals who are very much still with us.
With the final series set to be released in two parts – the first half on November 16 and the second on December 14 – many royal experts and historians have been vocal in their criticism as the series is set to depict many events, most shockingly of all the final days of Diana, Princess of Wales.
The damaging scenes throughout the more recent episodes in the series have been met by loud opposition. Speaking to OK! former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond adds her voice to the debate.
"It is distasteful to depict Diana’s final days", Jennie says. "Can you imagine how you would feel if you turned on the television, and there was a very credible lookalike acting out the final days of your dead mother?
"William and Harry lived through those days. They endured years of seeing their mother’s face on the front page of every newspaper and magazine. They have both worked hard to try to come to terms with the death of Diana."
Jennie – who had a front row seat to the events in the final two instalments of the show – adds: "William has done rather better than Harry. To be confronted by it all, in fictional form, must be unimaginably painful. Of course, it’s quite ironic that Harry has a contract with Netflix.
"The danger with The Crown is that young people tend, in my experience, to believe that it is true. I see Dominic West (plays Prince Charles in the final two series) has said that The Crown gives people the chance to see public figures in their private lives. But it doesn’t, does it? Peter Morgan has no better idea than I, (in fact I can probably hazard a better guess) about what goes on privately in the Royal Family.
"I cannot really see the point of depicting such traumatic and difficult moments in the lives of people who are still living – except for the entertainment of others. If you want to know what happened during those years, you can look at the news reports and see videos for real.
"I’ve been watching the Jimmy Savile dramatisation which is equally disturbing – but there is a point to that because it gives his victims the chance to speak out. All The Crown is going to do is cause more hurt – Charles and the whole family will be relieved once it is over."
The issue around how many people take the events depicted in the series as gospel has been spoken about many times – with some very famous faces speaking out on how damaging the show could be to living members of the Royal Family.
Ahead of the release of the fifth series last year, legendary actress of stage and screen Dame Judi Dench wrote an open letter in the Times accusing the show of “crude sensationalism” and called the series “cruelly unjust.”
Adding her criticism to former Prime Minister Sir John Major's comments that the show was a "barrel-load of nonsense", Dame Judi wrote, "Sir John Major is not alone in his concerns that the latest series of The Crown will present an inaccurate and hurtful account of history.
“Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series—that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence—this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.”
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