One of my favourite sketches of all time is an old Stars In Their Eyes spoof in which Bob Mortimer’s Matthew Kelly breathlessly greets a would-be George Michael with the words: “Well, you look nowt like him.”
The reason I mention this is that I started watching the new series of Netflix’s House of Windsor drama The Crown this week.
And I’m sorry to report that the vast majority of this latest cast looks nowt like ’em.
While that non-familiarity may not quite breed contempt, it does make this fifth series a little difficult to take seriously.
Jonathan Pryce looks and sounds about as much like 1990s Prince Philip as I did in the 1990s.
He is joined by the likes of Dominic West (too burly and ruggedly handsome to play Prince Charles), Imelda Staunton (already relying heavily on the “anyone can look like the Queen in a silk headscarf, dear” trick) and Johnny Lee Miller (then again, if John Major had been this handsome I guess it might explain the Edwina Currie thing).
Elizabeth Debicki does do a great line in Princess Diana’s “head bowed, gazing upwards with big doe eyes” thing and a fairly passable Sloane Ranger voice, but it doesn’t exactly feel like the world’s most photographed woman is back in the room.
Of course, this problem was always going to arise the minute Netflix reached the (relative) modern day – when media and public interest in the royals exploded.
The other massive issue is that the events are as well known as the faces.
Even if you didn’t live through them, chances are you’ll have absorbed them through countless films, books and TV shows.
This might leave some viewers swinging between impassive and impatient. By episode 3, I’d certainly given up on any thoughts of binge-watching it.
However, I accept that other viewers (hello, America) will continue to lap it up.
Still, as Charles says: “It’s extraordinary how two people’s idea of fun can be so totally different.”
NB: He was talking about him and Diana, not Camilla and Diana.
I haven’t reached THAT episode yet.
