TV review: The Crown, season two
The marriage of writer Peter Morgan’s canny empathy with the Windsors and Netflix’s bottomless coffers created a sensation in 2016 and series two more than lives up to the drama’s acclaimed original run. From palatial backdrops to cracking dialogue and a persistent air of tragedy, The Crown 2.0 has more – much more – of everything fans loved about the first season.
Once again the fault line running through the story is the relationship between the starchy, self-contained Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and an increasingly caddish Philip (Matt Smith). Fed up playing second fiddle to his wife , Philip sets off on an overseas trip where he may or may have have participate in adulterous japery (his unfaithfulness is all but spelt out, yet The Crown, demure occasionally to a fault, can’t quite bring itself to show us the thinkable).
