'The Crown' Season 4 Successfully Takes on Diana & Thatcher

Up until now, The Crown has been more impressive for what it represents ambition-wise than for its execution.

Perhaps the most aspirational project Netflix will ever undertake, the series was greenlit for six seasons on the strength of Peter Morgan's pitch alone: A history of Queen Elizabeth II's reign, spanning six decades, one per season. His previous hits, the feature film The Queen and the stage play The Audience, successfully humanized Britain's current monarch. A longer series covering her whole reign seemed a smart bet, even if it planned to recast the entire series twice rather than age up actors as time went on.

Philip: Everyone in this system is a lost, lonely, irrelevant outsider apart from the one person, the only person, who matters. She is the oxygen we all breathe, the essence of all our duty. Your problem, if I may say, is you seem to be confused about who that person is.