Many reviews are out today for the third season of "The Crown"

[quote]most reviewers think he is even better than Matt Smith

Could've seen that one coming, couldn't we?

LBJ is played by--of all people--Clancy Brown!

Erin Doherty is considered a scene stealer as an especially blunt Princess Anne.

[quote]Olivia Colman is said to give a magnificent turn in the Aberfan disaster episode (#3), and will likely win the Emmy for it, but she is oddly not at center stage for most of the season--the season is much more about the rest of her family.

You have to go where the interesting drama is.

Love the scene in the extended trailer where the Queen is making her way through a line of well wishers and encounters Margaret, the only one who is actually looking directly at her, giving her the glare of death as she curtsies. That scene alone makes me think HBC will match Vanessa Kirby’s portrayal.

The loss of Kirby will nonetheless be devastating. She was absolutely magnetic during the first two seasons of this show.

when does this start?

SPOILERS:

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The titles, time-frames, and basic plots of this season's episodes:

1) "OLDING" (1964-65) - The Labour party's leader, the anti-monarchist Harold Wilson, becomes Prime Minister, and a rumor reaches Philip and Elizabeth that he may be a Soviet mole, which makes her nervous during their weekly meetings. Also, the queen and the royal family attend Winston Churchill's funeral.

2) "MARGARETOLOGY" (1965) - Sibling rivalry erupts again as Princess Margaret, on a visit to the US with Lord Snowdon, is asked by Prime Minister Wilson to make a side visit to LBJ's White House to get him to help the UK's financial situation; we learn more about the ongoing unhappiness in Margaret's and Snowdon's marriage.

3) "ABERFAN" (1966) - A colliery disaster in Wales kills dozens of children in the small town of Aberfan, and Queen Elizabeth--making what she would later recall as the worst decision of her reign--waits a full week to visit the town to offer her sympathies. She then must confront the question as to why she waited so long to visit.

4) "BUBBIKINS" (1967) - After the "Colonels' Coup" in Greece forces King Constantine II to abdicate, Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Greece, is left without a home, so the queen--much to Prince Philip's annoyance--offers to let her live in Buckingham Palace. Can Alice and Philip reconcile after their lifetime of physical and emotional distance, brought on by her years of mental illness and her religious conversion and decision to become a nun?

5) "COUP" (1968) - As a delighted Queen Elizabeth goes on a special trip with her best friend "Porchey" (Lord Porchester) to the US to learn about horse training, the devaluation crisis back home hits the Labour Party hard. Lord Mountbatten becomes involved in a plot by key members of the British Establishment to oust Harold Wilson as PM and set up Mountbatten himself as an interim leader.

(cont.)

(cont.)

6) "TYWYSOG CYMRU" (1969) - Prince Charles finally takes center stage as his family sends him out of England yet again for schooling: this time to the ancient town of Aberystwyth to learn from an ardent Welsh nationalist how to speak Welsh as part of the televised ceremony of his formal investiture as Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle. We also see something of his life as an undergraduate at Cambridge, where he has become an ardent actor in extracurricular undergraduate productions.

7) "MOONDUST" (1969-1970) - The royal family becomes gripped (along with the rest of the world) with "moon-mania" as the Americans land on the surface of the moon. Philip, in particular, feels a mid-life crisis because he believes this would have been the sort of romantic adventurous thing he might have done himself as a Navy man--and then the Apollo astronauts are all invited to Buckingham palace to be honored by the royal family.

8) "DANGLING MAN" (1971-72) - Prince Charles, frustrated at how life as heir to the throne constantly works to stamp out his personality, makes a secret visit to his great-uncle and great-aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, at their chateau in France. But he discovers the Duke is dying and in frail health. Will the Queen be able to reconcile with the Duke before he dies? Also, the then-unmarried polo groupie Camilla Shand (who will in 2005 ultimately become the Duchess of Cornwall as Charles's 2nd wife) attracts Charles's attention.

9) "IMBROGLIO" (1970?-73) - Ted Heath becomes Prime Minister as the Conservatives win election, but the queen finds him stuffy and uncommunicative. Prince Charles is confronted by his family about his romantic relationship with Camilla Shand, whom his mother considers an unsuitable possibility as his future queen consort. Meanwhile, Princess Anne has an affair with Charles's polo rival, Major Andrew Parker-Bowles... who also attracts Camilla's romantic attentions...

10) "CRI DE COEUR" (1973-77) - With her marriage on the brink of collapse, Princess Margaret finds solace with a new and much younger love, a gardening-loving baronet's son Roddy Llewellyn, which causes hysterical headlines when the two travel together to her seaside vacation home in the Caribbean. Harold Wilson is returned to power as Prime Minister in 1974, but he has secret news about himself for the Queen. And in 1977, with the economy continuing to stagnate, the Queen prepares for her Silver Jubilee and wonders whether her reign has had any meaning.

(I should note that somewhere in here--I can't tell if it's in episode 5, 6, or 7--Prince Philip gets the family involved in a BBC TV documentary about their life called "Royal Family," which is meant to make them more relatable to the Queen's subjects and does cause a national sensation when it is aired in June of 1969, but does not make the Queen very happy.)

[quote] Prince Charles is confronted by his family about his romantic relationship with Camilla Shand, whom his mother considers an unsuitable possibility as his future queen consort.

Sorry: this should read instead "whom the Queen Mother and Lord Mountbatten consider an unsuitable possibility as his future queen consort."

One more week, bitches!

I can’t wait for this. I’ll miss Claire Foy, but Olivia Colman is bae. x

Helena Bonham-Crater was on Graham Norton and said she'd had a seance with Princess Margaret and Margaret told her: "You will be better than the other actress."

What an idiot to reveal such rubbish.

Colman gasped when she said that, because of the tactlessness. But Helena Bonham-Crater covered by saying Margaret was referring to another actress who was up for the role.

I mean HBC is pretty cuckoo r11, that seems on brand for her.

So is this the official thread for the third season now? A Google search results page as the thread preview image would be very on brand for DL, not gonna lie. 😄 Unrelated, but have you noticed that DL doesn't allow linking to that long Season 3 thread that was started last year and that we used until last month?

Listened to a podcast recently where they went through the new actors. It takes a bit to get used to Colman, so I fully expect weeks' worth of "not my Queen!" cunting around here before we finally settle on her. The actor playing the Prime Minister is apparently one of the standouts this season, so I can't wait for that.

I love that no-nonsense Colman told HBC that she didn't believe she had spoken to Princess Margaret.

Thought it opened on Netflix Nov 17?

Yes, a week from now, just as r9 noted.

Things that will NOT be covered in the new season of "The Crown," even though these events fits the time period:

*Princess Anne's first wedding

*Anne's attempted kidnapping

*The Troubles in Northern Ireland

*the crown's relationship with the Nixon White House

*the crown's relationship with the Ford White House

*the deaths of the queen's uncle Henry, the Duke of Gloucester; her aunts Marina, the Duchess of Kent, and Mary, the Princess Royal; and her nephew Prince William of Gloucester

Tobias Menzies fits the aging Phillip more, I'm sure, though he seems to be a bit shorter.

But gah, I wanted to lick every inch of Matt Smith every time he was on screen as Phillip.

R17 Prince Edward being caught giving head to the Head Boy?

Just consumed 10 hours of it.... over the space of several days! With time out for Thanksgiving celebrations.

The new cast of royals are all terrific: Tobias Menzies is a creepy, fully believable Philip, more so than Matt Smith. HBC is great as Margaret, Colman is great as the queen, but I found them both somewhat less sympathetic this time around: both held me at arm's length, particularly Colman. Charles and Anne are both well cast. A singular error: the young Camilla Parker-Bowles is much too conventionally pretty/sexy to play "The Rottweiler," who was never anything but a horseface even in the bloom of youth. Lots of good support from the Prime Ministers, courtiers, etc.

It's quite good, but not all hours pack the same punch. (I nodded off during Ep 5.) The two eps set in Wales were fascinating to me, as was the miner's strike. I can't believe they completely avoided what was going on in Ireland at the time. I guess they'll address it with Mountbatten's death in Season 4. The time jumps are a bit confusing, particularly in the final episode. How'd it get to be 1977 so suddenly?

Thumbs up, regardless.

I really wish they would have just made each season a strict decade. Each one doesn't have to be a year in the life of Queen Elizabeth, but at least keep the timeline tight. This one made the 70s seem like a useless bore. I didn't really get a feel for the massive changes the occurred in the swinging 60s in and around London.

Is it a bit odd to make a series about the life of a major historic personage when that person is still living?

Do you think the Queen watching this and thinking "Well, they got that wrong...and that...and that...I would NEVER have worn that...nonsense, she hated him, he hated her..."

Claire Foy said she heard through mutual acquaintances (?) that the Queen had, in fact, watched at least Season 1 but had no further comment.

Story was that Edward and Sophie were watching it and had convinced the Queen to watch when it first started.

I remember from the story about it that the Queen said about something covered in the series - it was never that dramatic.

You have to remember: this show isn't about "the times" in general: it's about incidents in the life of the Queen and the British Royal Family.

As with all of our lives, some years are less interesting than others. They wanted to cover more than 25 years in 3 seasons, so they had to cut out a lot of dead years for the BRF.

I just read that Gillian Anderson will be playing Margaret Thatcher. She's a good actor, but I don't think she would have been among my top picks.

This season is sort of a bore. It’s more about the queen watching history than being a part of it. It just reinforces the royal family has no real reason to be in the modern world.

Yes, the acting is great but being a cold queen isn’t so hard

I think Olivia Colman is really solid, but it's not a particularly exciting or emotionally involving performance. Which is true to the character, but I had been hoping for more.

r26, she's the show runner's romantic partner.

Perhaps some spoilers...

Just binge-watched Season 3. The two standout performances (for me) were Jane Lapotaire as Princess Alice, mother of Prince Phillip, and Charles Dance as Lord Mountbatten. Both were terrific interpretations of very layered characters. The episodes in which they were featured were very good. The best episode for me though was the one in Wales with the mine disaster. Perhaps because I was not familiar with the story.

Was a bit surprised by the (mild) sex scenes. Given that they were royals, I would think that sex would have been inferred but not shown. Loved Princess Margaret when she was buying a swimsuit for her young gardener/boyfriend, Roddy Llewellyn.

Margaret: Try this one on. What size do you wear?

Roddy: I'm small.

Margaret: Oh god, I hope not...

I have only watched two episodes but I'm not feeling Olivia Colman. She's so old and makes the clothes look cheap and old too. I can't help it but her tight smile, flashing eyes and ridiculously cultured speech make me think of Carol Burnett doing Queen Elizabeth. It's like a comic parody. She really takes me out of the story. She's supposed to be in her late thirties and looks mid sixties. HBC looks a bit old too but she's so damn distracting and fun to watch. She inhabits Margaret rather well. I can't wait for a Claire Foy flashback I'm afraid. Colman is ruining this for me. Her acting reminds me of Meryl. And that's never good.

Not Really R22.

Hair, makeup, and costumes are worse this season. The show is called, The Crown, yet all of the tiara's look like plastic undersized shit. The Queen's clothes looked cheap, unlike the vibrant outfits from S1 & S2. Princess Margaret went from a fashionable woman to a vain frumpy housewife in polka dots. We are supposed to believe that is the same character? Did the cast from S2 take the jewely costumes on their way out?

Apparently the queen stopped watching after the Gordonstoun episode last season--she was offended they portrayed Philip as so heartless towards Charles.

Why would Prince Edward show her that episode r34?

Claire Foy’s performances were so good. I like Olivia Colman and aging the queen was necessary. But the quality of the performance it’s not quite the same as the first season.

The first prince Philip had a really nice ass.

Yeah, but this Prince Phillip knows how to turn bossy Scottish tops into hands-free cuming bottoms.

Erin Doherty is a hoot as ‘no-fucks-given’ Princess Anne. She’s a very talented young actress.

Completely agree r31. I am also not a fan of Tobias Menzes and was really disappointed in seeing him cast. They should have kept the original cast and aged them. This season stinks.

Princess Margaret died in 2002 so no such conversation about a TV show ever took place.