The situation is this: I am a genie, condemned to eternity in a lamp. Thankfully, you – on your last pre-lockdown trip to town for necessities, lured into an old trinket shop seemingly against your will – have picked up my shiny prison and rubbed it clean. I burst out in a plume of otherworldly smoke and detritus.
“THANKINGS, TRAVELLER,” I say, or something like that. “FOR FREEING THE ANCIENT GENIE-SLASH-GUARDIAN GUIDE TV PREVIEW COLUMNIST OF THE LAMP. I can grant thee these wishes three … ”
“Infinite wishes,” you say.
“… Let me finish. I can grant thee these wishes three, but also all three wishes have to be in the form of questions about the new series of The Crown (Netflix, Sun).”
“Oh,” you say. “OK. Well, I should probably start with the obvious one: do my prior feelings towards the actor Gillian Anderson make it very difficult to watch her play Margaret actual Thatcher?”
“They do nay,” I boom. “It’s quite strange. You were expecting to combine all your feelings about Anderson from The X-Files or Sex Education and feel very confused about watching her play what is, essentially, a ghoul,” I say, and you nod. “But she does it so well – a sort of Roald Dahl villain, a voice like a sheep cursed by a witch to talk, some very uncomfortable-looking ‘neck acting’ – that you soon forget who special agent Dana Scully even is.”
“Thank you, genie,” you say. “And what is the rough arc of this season?”
“Lowball question but I’ll take it,” I answer. “This series – Olivia Colman’s last as Queen – moves us into the 80s and sees Prince Charles tentatively romance, then marry, then get very disappointed with Diana, played with perfect leaning-one’s-head-and-wilting aplomb by Emma Corrin, all while Thatcher takes a cold grip on power and the IRA looms darkly in the background. This is all done in the usual Crown way: radio reports over people walking across very big rooms; people putting necklaces on in a way that feels significant; brisk little tête-à-têtes between Thatcher and the Queen; and then some incredibly heavy-handed hunting metaphors.”
“Is it good, then?” you say, and I shrug and say: “I mean, yeah, it’s a sumptuous, perfectly cast period drama that is done astonishingly well; you really can’t knock it, can you?”
And you say: “As a genie that doesn’t really support the royal family and, indeed, questions why we need them at all – the one day off we all get for their weddings once a generation and the tired old “good for tourism” arguments aside – do you really think we need a premium TV show about the family that shows them as being a lot more human and multifaceted and likable than they probably actually are? I mean the Queen’s face is already on every pound coin I’ve ever spent. Do I really need to see it again on Netflix?”
“Ah,” I say, “great question. Sadly I’ve answered my three for today. I’m sure the comments section will answer that for you, though.”
My voice is high and distant and obscene now, as I am sucked back into the lamp. “Goodbye!”
