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Reviews
The Crown: No Woman's Land (2022)
The Crown is still great - its main rival is itself
S5 of The Crown is a slow-burn but I still found it entertaining and bingeworthy. It doesn't quite reach the heights of S4 - which won all seven drama categories at last year's Emmy awards, how to top that?! But S5 is still prestige TV and highly worth viewing.
This is meant to be a review of the show, not of the monarchy, or whether Princess Diana was saint or sinner *spoiler: as with every human, it's likely she was neither, and The Crown does well to traverse the balance.
'No Woman's Land' is really pt 1/2, with 'Gunpowder' pt 2/2. These are strong episodes, especially when viewed together. The focus is on Princess Diana, her paranoia, and how the infamous BBC interview was nefariously obtained by Martin Bashir. Elizabeth Debicki gives a fantastic performance as Diana, absolutely inhabiting the character. It's way more than doing an impersonation or adopting singular expressions.
Debicki conveys Diana's loneliness, her vulnerability, her hope to love again, and her strength in continuing to fight "the system." Debicki makes it credible that from the inside Diana believed she wasn't being vindictive by spilling the royal tea (earl grey?) to the world. She wanted her side of the story to be told, and was largely conned into doing so.
S5 definitely has pace-and-flow issues overall but these two episodes didn't. The following episode 'Couple 31' is even better, exploring the complexity of marriage and divorce. That episode would receive Oscar nominations if it was a film.