Following the death of the Queen, millions of viewers are tuning into the original Netflix series The Crown, which chronicles her life from a young girl to her decades on the throne.
According to Netflix data released on Tuesday, the award-winning first series from 2016 has returned to the streaming giant’s top 10 most watched global shows, logging a total of 17.6 million hours of views.
Between September 5-11, the show reached No.4 in Britain, and was in the top 10 in 26 countries, including Mexico, Ukraine, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Hong Kong.
The first season depicts the Queen as a young girl, played by Verity Russell, and the young adult Queen played by Claire Foy.
It spans the period of her life from 1947 to 1956, beginning with her wedding to the Duke of Edinburgh and ending in the months following Winston Churchill’s resignation as British prime minister, and in between focusing on the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret, who decides not to marry Peter Townsend.
English actor Olivia Coleman plays the Queen in series three and four, while Imelda Staunton, 66, takes over in series five, which is set to premiere in November.
Producers paused production on the show’s sixth season following the news of the monarch’s death.
“As a mark of respect, filming on The Crown was suspended today,” producers for the series said in a statement to CNN.
“Filming will also be suspended on the day of Her Majesty The Queen’s funeral” on September 19, it read.
Why so popular?
For decades, royal commentary on TV series and movies about the monarchy and their historical inaccuracies (or not) has always been polarising, but none more so than what The Crown has delivered over its four seasons.
Award-winning writer of the series, Peter Morgan, said, “The Crown was a love letter to her”.
For many, the show delivers the most authentic, albeit dramatised look inside the palace walls and “humanises” the Queen, hence the resurgence in popularity.
The Washington Post’s London-based Jennifer Hassan said: “I think The Crown has done a really good job of capturing what she’s actually been doing all of these years, and what she’s been confronted with privately and publicly.
“And, by how much she has witnessed in her lifetime,” she said.
During the re-imagining of the Queen’s coronation in 1953, for example, Hassan says the show showed the “vulnerable side” of the Queen, and “humanised her that she had this big, daunting task to take on”.
Fake news becomes fake history
However, not everyone likes a royal biopic.
Associate professor of English at Flinders University Giselle Bastin in an essay on The Conversation about the fourth series of The Crown, said several royal biographers and one of its stars (Helen Bonham Carter) were concerned about inaccuracies.
Criticisms “ranged from historical inaccuracy – the Queen being wrongly dressed for the Trooping the Colour, Princess Anne’s horsemanship – to a propensity to flesh out the narrative with half-truths and downright falsities”, Dr Bastin said.
“For example, the suggestion that Charles and Camilla remained an item all the way through his marriage to Diana, and the idea that Prince Philip gave Diana a veiled threat about what could await her if she didn’t play by the script,” she said.
“In addition to criticising the biopic’s misrepresentation of royal lives, the show’s detractors express concerns long aired about popular history – that an admiring and gullible viewing public will assume the program is factual and treat it as real history.
“The public, it is implied, need protection from fake news turning into fake history.”
She stated one royal biographer, Hugo Vickers, released The Crown Dissected in 2019 to separate fact from fiction in the first four series.
What did the royal family think of The Crown?
It varies, depending on who you are.
The late Queen’s grandson Prince Harry spoke about the Netflix series on The Late Late Show With James Corden in February last year.
“They don’t pretend to be news. It’s fiction,” he said. “But it’s loosely based on the truth.
Prince William reportedly said the two most recent series exploited his parents.
“He feels that both his parents are being exploited and being presented in a false, simplistic way to make money,’’ Forbes reported.
“In this case, it’s dragging up things that happened during very difficult times 25 or 30 years ago without a thought for anyone’s feelings.
“That isn’t right or fair, particularly when so many of the things being depicted don’t represent the truth.”
Either way, the show – which has won 21 Emmy Awards including best drama (for season four) and two Golden Globes – now has another life of its own.
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