The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki is staggeringly good as Diana – no wonder they keep bringing her back from the dead
FOUR mildly eccentric, hit-and-miss episodes into the new Netflix series, The Crown suddenly loses its mind and Princess Diana appears as a ghost.
It’s not subtly done, either.
She’s dead, in a coffin, on the way back from Paris.
Then — “ta-da!” — she’s back again, sitting opposite Dominic West’s Prince Charles, on the same aeroplane and getting all flirty from ‘the other side’.
“Thank you for how you were in the hospital,” Diana chuckles coquettishly, “So raw. Broken. And handsome.”
Wrestling Godzilla
A proper Bobby Ewing moment from a show that, much like the real Royal Family, never really knew whether it was a drama or a comedy but has finally thought, “Sod it, we might as well go for broke and try and have a laugh with this thing.”
With the spell well and truly broken, it’s probably just as well this is the last ever series of The Crown, which, as far as I can tell — because Netflix has released only the first four episodes on preview — concentrates almost entirely on the Diana and Dodi storyline.
Events move fast though with the Windsors — and the first character who really made me sit up and take notice was someone ginger answering to the name Prince Harry, played by Fflyn Edwards, who looks so much like a young Chesney from Coronation Street that I’m convinced Gordon Strachan would’ve been asked to take a DNA test if he was the real thing.
He’s given some pretty inviting lines as well, as we see when Diana first rouses him from a nightmare in episode one and asks: “Who were you wrestling in your sleep?”
“Godzilla.”
“And did you win?”
Win? He married her.
There are other eyebrow-raisers though, of course, including Yoann Blanc, who’s the absolute double of The Late Show’s Mark Lawson playing Henri Paul, the drunk French chauffeur, and Imelda Staunton, who’s as good playing the Queen as Khalid Abdalla is bad playing Dodi Fayed, who also reappears as a ghost in episode four.
Although, truth be told, he’s such an insipid character it’s hard to tell if he was ever really alive in the first place.
The only person who comes close to holding this whole pantomime together, however, is Elizabeth Debicki, who is staggeringly good as Diana.
Her performance is the difference, in fact, between someone like Steve Coogan doing a technically excellent impression during The Reckoning, but never really coming close to convincing you he was Jimmy Savile and an actress who’s nailed every gesture and word so perfectly it starts playing tricks with your mind.
Indeed, watch her for any length of time and you’ll almost understand why the production was so keen to bring her back from the dead.
As both Dallas and EastEnders will confirm though, there is no way back for a drama once you’ve gone down the ghost route.
Nor should there be, because I have no firm opinion or feelings about Diana either way, but it gets my professional goat that a show which spends so much of its time trying to persuade viewers the tabloids did nothing but lie about the Royal Family and invade their privacy does almost nothing else but lie about the Royal Family and invade their privacy, in the most crass and unimaginative way possible.
I won’t deny, however, there is still an element of poignancy about The Crown which is all wrapped up in the late Queen, who understood Diana’s death caused an emotional revolution both in real life and the TV version, where she responds to Charles’s insistence the public are demanding “attention and love and empathy” by snapping: “And theatre and spectacle and exhibitionism.”
She was right as well, naturally.
There was the restrained, respectful, modest, slightly uptight Britain that existed before that summer’s events.
And the tearful, over- sharing, self-indulgent version which started crying its eyes out on August 31, 1997, and has never really stopped.
I miss the old one every single day.
HITCH’S MOVING SCENE
THE perils of newspaper journalists appearing on reality shows were vividly demonstrated this week via the medium of Channel 4’s brilliant Banged Up series and The Mail on Sunday’s resident know-all Peter Hitchens.
One minute he was boldly describing himself as “a one-man think tank”.
The next? We were watching recorded highlights of Hitchens taking a dump on prime-time television.
A shock to everyone’s system as the one-man stink tank had only just finished telling us he understood the justice system better than the entire planet, without apparently stopping to consider the possibility C4 would be dishing out its own retribution to a columnist whose political agenda didn’t fit the network’s right-on bill.
The one crumb of comfort here for Hitchens is that every time some witless cretin shouts “I’D GIVE IT TEN MINUTES” at him, he can rest easy in the knowledge it was done in the cause of a hugely entertaining television show that was funny, terrifying and informative, often all at the same time.
It was surprisingly touching as well to see the seven celeb inmates at Shrewsbury prison bond with the real-life ex-cons.
Although Hitchens’s attempts to soothe violent criminal Tom Roberts with an impromptu Bible reading (Luke 16: 19-21) crashed and burned with the response: “I’m bored of it already.”
An impertinence to which there is only one possible reply.
I’d give it ten minutes, Tom.
CHARLOTTE In Sunderland, BBC3, former Geordie Shore foghorn Charlotte Crosby: “Before I had the baby I look back at photos and I was literally like a plank of wood.”
And now?
Still two short ones.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “Which Portuguese manager succeeded Mauricio Pochettino as manager of Tottenham Hotspur FC?”
Michelle: “Terry Venables.”
Ben Shephard: “The white armies fought the revolutionary red army in a 20th Century civil war in which country?”
Joe: “England.”
Ben Shephard: “The common phrase meaning this way and that is hither and what?”
Harsimar: “Ho.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “In the lyrics of the Village People hit, where can you study oceanography?”
Ellie: “The YMCA.”
Random TV irritations
JOURNALIST Grace Dent sacrificing all professional credibility in the desperate pursuit of Z-list fame.
Chloe Madeley and anyone else who isn’t Italian referring to a grandmother as “Nonna”.
The nauseating display of attention- seeking that erupts on Claudia Winkleman’s balcony every time she opens up the Strictly phone lines.
And Steph McGovern crawling straight back on to BBC1’s Have I Got News For You following the collapse of her Channel 4 show without me really needing to tell you how many jokes the regulars made at her expense. But just like her viewing figures, it was zero.
FRESH from having his prostate gland removed, on a characteristically cheerful episode of EastEnders, Alfie Moon, was given a stark choice by the cancer specialist who recommended “hormone therapy and a course of radiotherapy after that.”
“Best-case scenario?”
“A full recovery.”
“And worst-case scenario?”
ITV bring back Love Me Do with Shane Richie.
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Popeye the Sailor Man and former satirist Ian Hislop, who’s given up comedy to become an apologist for Britain’s anti-Semitic ar*ehole community.
Sent in by D Smart, of Colchester.
INCIDENTALLY, could I just assure Channel 4 and the BBC, their comedy output could not have embraced diversity more thoroughly, empowering performers, regardless of gender, race, ethnic origin, sexuality and disability, in an inclusive environment free from racism, sexism, mis- ogyny, transphobia, hate speech and the patriarchy.
It’s also about as funny as a sackful of drowned kittens.
But it is diverse and inclusive. Well done you . . .
TV GOLD
BBC1’S reliably gripping series The Met, even if it is a 24 Hours In Police Custody rip-off.
Piers Morgan hopefully putting that poisonous old moron Jeremy Corbyn, into permanent retirement with Monday’s Talk TV demolition.
Career criminal Tom Roberts asking journalist Peter Hitchens: “Have you ever played Grand Theft Auto?” on C4’s Banged Up.
And Sophie Raworth’s perfectly judged Cenotaph interview with 101-year-old World War Two veteran Bernard Madden, which was the most beautiful reminder to treasure Britain’s greatest generation while we still can.
MONDAY, BBC1, Why Are We Still Searching For Fossil Fuels?
So BBC1 reporters like Richard Bilton can take long-haul flights to Dubai and Alaska and gaze forlornly at the scenery while seriously wondering: “Why are we still searching for fossil fuels?”
Apparently.
Great sporting insights
SIMON THOMAS: “It’s a chain of events all happening simultaneously.”
Paul Merson: “Gabriel air-kicks his mis-kick.”
And Jamie Carragher: “The advantage wasn’t with Chelsea but it’s certainly more advantageous for them.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
WORST subtitling error of 2023? At the Cenotaph, on Sunday, where every time David Dimbleby namechecked Senior Drum Major Gareth Chambers, the following words would appear: “Seniors the gas chambers.”