Weird depictions of Diana tarnish final episodes of ‘The Crown’

Raise your hand if you had the Chicago Sun-Times getting name-checked in the final season of the wildly popular Netflix series “The Crown.”

Me neither, but there it is in a Season 6 episode titled “Ruritania,” when Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel) gives a rousing speech in Chicago in April 1999, taking a hawkish stand on Kosovo, and Andrew Havill as the Private Secretary to the Sovereign, Sir Robert Fellowes, reads press reports to Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II.

“The New York Times says the prime minister has a new nickname. King Tony. The Wall Street Journal has come out in emphatic support … but I think the best summary is from the Chicago Sun-Times. It claims Mr. Blair has beguiled the city with his charms, leaving Americans pining to have him as their president instead.”

“Goodness,” replies the queen.

For the record: I could find no such excerpt in the Sun-Times’ coverage of Blair’s visit to the Economic Club of Chicago, and for that matter, Fellowes was no longer the queen’s private secretary at that point, having been succeeded by Sir Robin Janvrin in February of 1999. Ah, but even as some critics have decried the series for its factual inaccuracies ever since it debuted in 2016, creator Peter Morgan has (rightfully) countered this is a fictional interpretation of known events, as is virtually every other historical series and/or film ever released.

As such, “The Crown” has been addictive viewing, as a rotating cast of many of Britain’s finest actors have portrayed Queen Elizabeth II et al., in events from 1947 to the mid-2000s, where Season 6 concludes. Alas, the final season of “The Crown” is the most uneven and unsatisfying of the lot, wobbling out of the gate with some horrendous choices in the first few episodes before at least partially regaining its stride down the stretch and bringing things to a close on a graceful note.

Let’s get the worst out of the way. The first four episodes of Season 6 (which premiered Nov. 16) focus on the events leading to the horrific and tragic crash that claimed the life of Princess Diana in August of 1997, an accident that also claimed the lives of Dodi Fayed and the driver of the car, Henri Paul. Despite Elizabeth Debicki’s glowing work as Diana, we’re subjected to one heavy-handed foreshadowing scene after another in the buildup to the accident, to the point where we can practically see a halo forming over Diana’s head.

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Much more egregious is the disastrous decision to have Diana and Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) appear separately as reassuring ghostly apparitions. In one scene, Prince Charles (Dominic West) sits across from Imaginary Diana after her death and says “Paris. One of the busiest cities in the world, and you brought it to a standstill.”

Diana’s reply: “Ta-da!”

I’m not kidding.

Diana — I guess she’s a figment of Charles’ imagination — then assuages Charles’ feelings of guilt by “telling” him, “Thank you for how you were in the hospital. So raw. Broken. And handsome. I’ll take that with me. You know I loved you so much. So deeply …” How convenient for Charles.

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In the final episodes of the series (premiering Thursday), Princess Margaret (the great Lesley Manville) is given a vibrant and moving sendoff, while the queen’s resentment of Blair’s blazing popularity (which eventually flamed out) makes for a rather tedious subplot. Much time is devoted to the teenage years and early 20s of Prince William (Ed McVey) and Prince Harry (Luther Ford), who often come across as petulant and privileged (word that rhymes with “tankers”) and comport themselves like villains in a 1990s prep school movie. William’s budding romance with Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) is handled like a low-budget made-for-TV movie, with dialogue along the lines of Kate saying, “I’d started to worry that we’d drifted into the dreaded friend zone,” and William responding, “Oh no, I’d hate that.” And when the queen says, “I worry about Harry,” and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) responds, “We all do,” one can’t help but laugh and think: You have NO idea what’s ahead.

More in keeping with the series’ overall quality blend of sophistication, dry humor and beautifully rendered drama: the storyline about “Operation London Bridge,” the code name for the queen’s funeral. With Charles about to marry Camilla (an excellent Olivia Williams) and Elizabeth on the brink of turning 80, the queen rather reluctantly agrees to participate in the planning of her memorial service. When it’s pointed out the logistics will of course be more complicated if the queen dies abroad, she quips, “I shall do my best to keep it local.” There’s also an unabashedly sentimental and deeply moving imagination of how the piper’s lament “Sleep Dearie, Sleep” was chosen for the queen’s state funeral. To our good fortune, resonant moments such as that occurred far more often than the missteps over the series’ entirety, and that’s why we’ll always have a fond place in our hearts for “The Crown.”