THE QUEEN. (2006) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE QUEEN. (2006) DIRECTED BY STEPHEN FREARS.

WRITTEN BY PETER MORGAN.

BASED ON TRUE EVENTS.

STARRING HELEN MIRREN, JAMES CROMWELL, ALEX JENNINGS, SYLVIA SYMS, MICHAEL SHEEN AND HELEN MCRORY.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I LOVED this film. I’ve become obsessed with the Royal Family since binge-watching THE CROWN on Netflix last December. My kids and I literally watched all sixty hours of it in the run-up to Christmas.

We were enchanted beyond belief, and then watched the movie SPENCER, in which Kristen Stewart from the TWILIGHT movies plays a neurotic and emotionally strung-out Princess Diana attending at Sandringham Castle for three days over Christmas of 1991.

Her marriage to Charles was already in tatters and she was giving serious thought to leaving both him and the Royal Family. Seriously gripping stuff. We also watched THE WINDSORS, a wickedly funny spoof show on Netflix, and now we’ve just watched THE QUEEN as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favour of the Royal Family or anything like that. My personal views are that everyone is born equal, and that no human being is better than another just because of the family they were born into.

Also, the money spent on the Royal Family could house and feed a load of homeless and hungry people. But they’re good value for money in the entertainment stakes, the Royals, and it’s that element which we’ve been enjoying.

THE QUEEN is as well done as any of the aforementioned films and shows. Helen Mirren plays the titular role of Her Madge, Queen Elizabeth the Second. The film concerns the slowness of the Royal Family to publicly mourn and react to the death of Princess Diana in an horrific car crash in a Paris tunnel in August 1997.

At the time of the crash, in which Dodi Al Fayed, Diana’s supposed lover at the time, was also killed, the Queen and Prince Philip and the Queen Mother were all in Balmoral in Scotland, enjoying the hunting, or stalking, and shooting of the beautiful deer and other livestock on the fifty thousand or so acres that comprised the magnificent country estate that had once belonged to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

When news of Diana’s death reaches them in Balmoral, the inner circle of Royals, led by the Queen, battened down the hatches and refused to interact with the press or public at all. The Queen wanted a quiet private funeral with no fuss or razzmatazz; she wanted ‘a period of restrained grief, followed by sober, private mourning.’

Now, doesn’t that sound healthy and cathartic, not to mention lovely and inclusive, not! Keeping so much in at all times can’t be good for the body, and yet old Queenie lived to be nearly a hundred, so what do I know…?

The Queen was even crass and petty enough to mention that Diana was no longer a member of the Royal Family, or an HRH, and therefore wasn’t entitled to all the bells and whistles of a Royal send-off. Surely no queen in history has ever been so out of touch with the mood and needs of her people. Well, maybe Marie Antoinette of France…!

The British public adored Diana. Fact. Remember the ‘outpouring of grief’ and the sea of flowers, cards and little notes and tokens left outside Buckingham Palace in her honour? Remember Elton John singing his specially re-worked hit song CANDLE IN THE WIND?

Diana had a lot of friends from the world of fashion, pop music, entertainment, charity and celebrity in general and everyone was giving their heart-broken reactions publicly. Except for the family she’d married into. The question Where is our Queen began to be asked.…

Luckily, Tony Blair, wonderfully played here by TWILIGHT actor Michael Sheen, was on hand to do some damage limitation. The dynamic young(ish) leader of the Labour Party, elected Prime Minister of Britain at the start of the summer that year, put out a statement about the ‘People’s Princess,’ the ‘Queen of Hearts’ and the ‘beacon of hope’ that was Diana, Princess of Wales, that struck just the right note with the grieving public.

When people began to express extreme doubt as to the need for such a useless monarchy, even the Queen realised that it was time to act. Tony Blair issued the reluctant monarch with a to-do list re Diana’s death designed to get her back into the peoples’ good books. Personally, I feel like it was all too little and too late, but whatever, she did it anyway. One didn’t want to lose one’s privileged position, you see…

I was disgusted by the way the Queen Mother, whom I’d always thought of as a harmless old dear, was so anti-Diana in her sentiment, so vehement in wanting nothing to change in the Royal Family’s routine on Diana’s account. Ditto the rude and arrogant Prince Philip, who, when told there’s some bad news about Diana, barks, Why? What’s she done now…? Such truly awful, horrible people.

The film is interspersed with real live footage of the news as it broke over Diana’s death. The lovely Kay Burley is there for SKY NEWS and some of the BBC lads are there too. There’s even a clip of the famous PANORAMA interview in which a shy Diana peeping out from under her long eyelashes tells a now-disgraced Martin Bashir that ‘there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a little crowded, yeah.’   

This film is a must for Royal watchers, though the Royal Family themselves don’t come across very well in it. Unlike the Blairs, a happy, normal noisy family by comparison. And if you can think of any more films about Royals past and present, let me know. I’m on a roll here.                                                                                                                    

THE CROWN. (2016-2023) A SUPERB NETFLIX SERIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE CROWN. (2016-2023) AN HISTORICAL DRAMA CREATED BY PETER MORGAN.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

My kids and I have been glued to this Netflix show all December long. We were, quite simply, addicted to the drama and the brilliant, sparkly writing, not to mention the glorious period costumes and the gorgeous interiors and exteriors.

It tells the story of the second Queen Elizabethan era, from her coronation in 1952 to the marriage of Prince Charles and Queen Camilla in 2005. There are six seasons, containing ten hour-long episodes each. The main cast is changed every two seasons to allow for the natural ageing of the characters. This really pissed one off in the beginning, but one grew used to it…!

Claire Foy is phenomenal as the young Queen in seasons One and Two. She’s clearly madly in love with her husband, Prince Philip, who, at this stage in the show, is portrayed as being repeatedly unfaithful to his best gal.

She’s devastated by his lack of feeling, but the stiff upper lip endowed upon her by her grandmamma, Queen Mary, has already kicked in and she bears her disappointments stoically.

We see also the abdication of King Edward VIII, Elizabeth’s father’s brother, who gives up the throne in order to marry the love of his life, American socialite, Wallis Simpson. This is the shocking event that catapults Elizabeth onto the throne, as her father, now King George the Sixth, only lives for a few years after taking over from his brother.

I love John Lithgow as Winston Churchill, by the way, and also Pip Torrens as Tommy Lascelles, the Queen’s advisor and the Man who says No to Everything, lol. He’s such a stickler for tradition, Gawd bless ‘im.

Poor Princess Margaret, the party princess, marries sleazy photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones, after being denied the love of her life, as she sees it, by the Queen… Group Captain Anthony Jones… Margaret turns into Helena Bonham-Carter in seasons Three and Four, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking raconteur, the life and soul of every party, but at her core, an emptiness…

Olivia Colman is a dead ringer for the more middle-aged Queen as she strides spryly around the grounds and stables in all weathers with her beloved horses and dogs. She is obliged around this time to navigate the Thatcher era, and the first ever female Prime Minister, a novelty for all. She has many official chats with the Iron Lady herself.

Elizabeth may not particularly like Mrs. T., but there’s a mutual respect between the two women, who, after all, are the hardest-working gals in the United Kingdom. Gillian Anderson is sublime as the delightfully posh-voiced lady boss; though I may not agree with her politics, I cried when Gillian Anderson as Maggie got the push, lol. Don’t judge me; she’s a bloody good actress!

Elsewhere, Camilla Shand-Parker-Bowles makes her first appearance, even before the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana. I was kind of shocked by this. I never knew Camilla was a fixture as far back as that. I always just assumed she turned up later in the story.

But no, she was already in the picture as the real love of Charles’s life by the time of the royal wedding. I liked her, funnily enough, though I can’t even imagine how her husband felt, having to answer the phone every five minutes to Prince Charles asking to speak to his wife…!

Charles is appallingly-behaved towards Diana in seasons Three and Four, spending as much of his time as possible away from her in different palaces (it’s well for some!), and screaming at her that Camilla is the love of his life and he’d do anything to protect her.

He did very little, it seemed, to protect Diana, his wife, from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I felt disgusted with him and very much on Diana’s side, all the way through to the portrayal of her horrible death.

Charles as played by Dominic West in the last two seasons seems to be much more Diana-friendly, but it’s too late then. I absolutely loved the drama with the Al Fayeds, and was genuinely shocked at the sight of Dodi’s dad, Mohamed, so cruelly manipulating his eldest son into orchestrating a relationship with Diana, just to suit his own ends. The stuff I didn’t know about before watching this show…!

Imelda Staunton was surely born to play the Queen in old age. The Queen never puts a foot wrong, never uses the wrong fork or wears an inappropriate dress, never shows an emotion beyond mild pleasure or mild disapproval, never slobs around on the couch wearing sweatpants, never even raises her voice.

Just think of all the emotions she must have suppressed over the years, and yet she seemed to be as healthy as a horse, so fair play to her. She got up, got dressed and ‘Queened’ every day for seventy-odd years. She beat Queen Victoria, as she so obviously wanted to do.

I don’t believe in monarchies and royal families because I think everyone is born equal, and I certainly think that the world’s wealth should be more evenly distributed (so much money for one family is utterly, utterly obscene!), but, if you’re looking for a steady, reliable sovereign who shows up every day and ‘Queens’ with all the breath in her body, then I guess Lizzie’s your man. And it doesn’t seem like Philip was ever much of a support, even going so far as to say to her face that she was his intellectual inferior. Oh yeah, like he’s so smart…!

By the time the show ends, Charles and the endlessly patient Camilla have finally tied the knot. The Queen even relents enough to give them her blessing, though Charles is going out of his mind waiting for her to step down, something she’s clearly not going to do. Blame Claire Foy, folks, haha. It’s all her fault.

Princes Andrew and Edward barely get a look-in, and not much air-time for Anne either. William’s met Kate Middleton by now, whose mum is not dissimilar from Mohamed Al Fayed in terms of manipulation, and ‘bad boy’ royal Harry is already acting out, presumably in an effort to deal with his feelings surrounding his mother’s death.

Elizabeth Debicki makes an almost unbelievably believable Diana. Charles Dance was great as Lord Mountbatten, and Jane Lapotaire as Philip’s mother, Princess Alice. I bawled my eyes out at the death of Princess Margaret.

The entire show is moving, well-written and compelling. And so addictive, we were never able to watch just one episode. Two, three or even four was much more the norm. And we learned so much history! Best TV series since The Sopranos. Don’t go breaking my balls over it now. The critic is always right…