The Crown presents royal stoicism at its best

The Crown

Available on Netflix

4/5

Claire Foy, the actress who played Queen Elizabeth II in the first two seasons of The Crown, has been replaced by Olivia Colman, who is now the middle-aged British monarch.

Colman is a regal replacement, one of the main reasons this season is so enthralling. Some critics have even gone as far as saying this role is a complete waste of Colman.

Perhaps one of the reasons the show is so popular is that, for the past three seasons, it has cast two exceptional actresses to portray a character who is unglamorous, unsexualised and ageing into the wallpaper with a duty to have a stiff upper lip.

It’s a role that Colman effortlessly slips into. The third season of the hit Netflix show portrays events around Elizabeth and her family from the mid-1960s until 1977, exposing their failures.

This season also takes us back to when Charles met Camilla, who is now his wife. While many think this is a glimpse into the royal family, the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, has said the series, whose first two seasons cost about $130 million (R1.93 billion) to make, is based on known facts and imagined private conversations.

The show remains interesting though. This season brings great focus to a time when anti-royalist sentiment was loud, and the British economy was dwindling and struggling to recover from the war, l eading many to ask, why would you pay the richest woman in the world more money to keep up her palaces even as your currency is devalued?

It’s a question that still needs to be answered. You’re basically paying people with zero personality to be an institution. But luckily there’s a show such as The Crown, which makes them slightly fascinating and shows us how the queen does nothing splendidly.