The Crown series 5 review: 'Gripping, but badly-told soap'

The Crown series 5 review: 'Gripping, but badly-told soap' Netflix With an all-star cast featuring Imelda Staunton, Dominic West and Jonny Lee Miller, Netflix's royal saga has now reached the 1990s and the then Prince and Princess of Wales' divorce. For if the Netflix saga about the British Royal Family initially began as a rather stately, arguably somewhat hagiographic, piece of work, then there was always the expectation of high drama ahead when it reached the 1990s – the decade in which the royals really became treated as celebrities, largely due to the "War of the Wales", aka the very public implosion of the then Prince and Princess of Wales' marriage. Netflix Meanwhile it's the "War of the Wales" that predictably provides the series with its real dramatic momentum, as the enmity builds through a disastrous "second honeymoon" through the publication of Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True Story, the "Camillagate" tapes, Prince Charles' mildly confessional interview with Jonathan Dimbleby – and then, of course, Princess Diana's much more confessional one, whose controversial procurement, filming and screening takes up two episodes. With a report on Bashir's duplicitous behaviour having only been released last year, these instalments have an additional contemporary frisson as they portray supposed internal wranglings within the BBC around the scoop.. Its arbitration of the Wales' marriage feels equitable: here were two people that simply could never have been compatible, the show suggests But for all that Prince Charles and Princess Diana had one of the most extraordinary marriages in human history, the show does well to suggest how it might have been simultaneously sad in extremely ordinary ways: it's a point poignantly made, in particular, through a conceit in which fictional couples whose divorces were stamped on the same day detail their own marital breakdowns. Come the final episode of this series, a sense of déjà vu takes hold, as Tony Blair arrives in power and Princess Diana is seen packing her bag for a visit to Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht, where she will encounter his son Dodi – because, of course, in its due-to-be-final next series, The Crown is set to cross over with The Queen, Morgan's fine, Oscar-winning 2006 film about the aftermath of Princess Diana's death, which was the first fruit of his interest in Britain's ruling family.