The Crown season three review: Prince Charles is the beating heart of the series

Fans of The Crown won’t be disappointed by its third season. But this time around, another royal steals the spotlight from the Queen.

When you’ve waited two years for something, it better be something worth waiting for.

The third season of The Crowndropped on Netflix this week, delighting royal fans and drama fans the world over.

This impressive and opulent series about the British royal family has had a drastic makeover. Every member of the cast has been changed over as the characters age up – this means Olivia Colman has taken over from Claire Foy as the Queen, Helena Bonham-Carter from Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret and Tobias Menzies from Matt Smith as Prince Philip.

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Olivia Colman has taken over as Queen Elizabeth in The Crown Season 3. Picture: Netflix

The new gang are lauded British thespians and they take on the ambitious changeover with great success, even if it takes some of them an episode or two to settle in.

The third season spans from 1964 until 1977 and it covers a tumultuous time in Britain with social upheavals, economic turmoil, the Aberfan tragedy and the revelation of a KGB spy among the upper echelon.

It’s also a time of personal challenges with the bust-up of Margaret’s turbulent marriage to Lord Snowden.

But the surprising star of the series is Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country, Les Miserables) who plays a twenty-something Prince Charles.

Yes, Prince Charles is the beating heart of The Crown’s impressive and opulent third season. This could be the rehabilitation of the man who will be King; a man many don’t want to be King.

He doesn’t even appear until episode six but Peter Morgan’s Netflix series grants the character such an empathetic and multilayered portrayal that you can’t help but be emotionally invested in this lonely young man and the expectations thrust upon him.

If the real-life Prince Charles’ inner life is even half of what The Crown posits, then he should win plenty of fans for his eventual coronation — perhaps even some republicans.

Josh O’Connor’s portrayal of Prince Charles is incredibly empathetic

The expensive Netflix series has never been about propping up a monarchic system, merely opening the nailed shut doors to its workings, and more significantly, to the mysterious people inside who sit among luxury but have some of the most unenviable positions in the world.

Not that the show is designed to get us to feel sorry for them, or to support dynastic rule.

In the first episode when — horror! — a Labour government is elected in 1964, Prince Phillip haughtily declares “The cold wind of socialism blowing through this land once more”.

But the pageantry and pomposity continues to be an irresistible pull for what is essentially an extremely well-produced royal soap opera, though it oddly doesn’t make that much hay of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden’s scandalous divorce and accusations of affairs.

Maybe it’s because we expected Margaret’s divorce to dominate that The Crown paid such scant attention (about two-thirds of the season finale episode) to it at all — surprise them, don’t be predictable.

But it does mean that Bonham-Carter is woefully underused — she has two feature episodes and then appears in some group scenes where she offers a cutting remark or two.

Margaret and Tony’s tempestuous marriage and divorce receives scant attention in the new series

The third season has done what few TV shows have contended with, replacing its entire cast — actors we’ve had 20 episodes to bond with and invest in — with a new group, expecting the audience to pick up where it left off, in 1964.

There’s a meta moment when Colman as Elizabeth looks at two stamps, one featuring Claire Foy and one featuring Colman’s profile and says people age and we have to get on with it.

Foy did such a spectacular job as the Queen, all that vulnerability and occasional rage just brimming beneath that polished surface, that anyone stepping into those shoes was going to compare less favourably.

Colman does an admirable job, even if it does take a few episodes for her to find her feet — for example, the first episode features the election of Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins) as PM and the Queen hears a rumour about him that he had been recruited as a KGB spy, and she starts to believe it.

You may find yourself thinking, “What? Claire Foy would never have fallen for that!”.

Save for a handful of key scenes across the 10-episode season, Colman is given little to do. That’s likely to do with The Crown’s desire to paint Her Majesty as a steady presence in a sea of turmoil as the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s suffer through economic hardship and a potential devaluing of the pound.

While this is thematically on-point, it gives Colman less to play with than her talents could’ve commanded, instead giving the meatier character arcs to O’Connor’s Charles or even Menzies’ Prince Phillip.

The main throughline of the season seems to be the continued relevance, or maybe irrelevance of the royal family at a time of great social change.

They grapple with being seen as aristocratic teats on the taxpayer and when The Crown cloisters them from what’s happening on the streets, miners’ strikes and all, not to mention a subtle calcification among certain characters, it gives us that impression too.

Well-meaning to be sure (mostly), but necessary? Not sure.

This season is neatly broken down by episode, rather than the previous seasons’ mini-arcs, each dealing with a different crisis or historical moment. It feels less cohesive than previous years and the season’s end (in 1977 at the Queen’s 25th Jubilee) feels a little abrupt.

Colman and Tobias Menzies take over from Claire Foy and Matt Smith

The structure makes it easier to dip in and out, but doesn’t necessarily have that binge factor.

The episode dealing with the disaster in the Welsh mining town of Aberfan is devastating and crushing while a boring event like Charles’ investiture as the Prince of Wales becomes a surprising highlight of the season with its thoughtful story about Welsh identity.

That episode introduces Charles as a person who knows he’s part of a whole but feels unheard and unseen. His thwarted courtship with the “bit of fun” Camilla (Emerald Fennell) further elucidates his perspective on his position in this grand family and also the patronising callousness of its older members.

The production design is top-notch

Erin Doherty is a scene-stealer as Princess Anne, a formidable, sure-footed and angst-free young royal who both understands her obligations but also feels comfortable asserting herself. You can easily make the connection between this portrayal and the real-life Anne who would go on to refuse titles for her kids and become the hardest working royal.

The Crown continues to be a must-watch series on a crowded TV schedule by virtue of its ambitious and superlative production values alone, and it is very well written. There’s also a dynamism to how it’s filmed so that it almost feels contemporary rather than some staid historical drama.

Fans won’t be disappointed by the new instalments but is it better than what came before? Not so much, but that’s also an extraordinarily high standard to best.

Maybe like the royal family’s ethos, consistency is the key.

The Crown premieres on Netflix on Sunday, November 17 at 7pm AEDT

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