Loving to Hate "The Crown" (Plus, it gets fly fishing wrong)

I cringe at how reverential the Netflix show The Crown is to the monarchy. I couldn't finish the first season because of all the vaseline on the lens. Even when being critical, the filmmakers backlit the queen & co. so they literally glowed.
And set them to heroic music.
It's Filmmaking 101: How to set the emotional tone so you criticize while upholding.

Still, I've been recovering from dental surgery, and I am enjoying the latest season of The Crown--mostly for the once-over-lightly review of the 1980s: the IRA,  the Falklands, the music Diana listens to...
But also for the pleasure of meta-viewing:

Some brutal insights into personal flaws aside, it's overall very dewy-eyed.
HOW DO THEY DO THAT?

Well, the queen still glows.

Shooting into an open window--that's a filmmaker's choice.

Well, of course. NOTHING on a screen is accidental--every single thing is a decision.

And cinematographers don't shoot INTO a bright light source on purpose.

Last night I watched an episode that's a perfect example.

The episode is devoted to the life of Fagan, the man who lost his job and therefore his family, due to Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher's brutal economic policies.
Fagan breaks into Buckingham Palace to complain to the queen about how Maggie Thatcher has wasted millions of pounds on an unnecessary war.

 

The queen comes across as the compassionate one...

but, alas, her hands are tied.
What can she do? The prime minister is a Meanie!

Poor queen. She comes across as the good guy vs. bad guy Maggie.

But really, the man could JUST as rightfully have leveled that complaint at the queen:

"You are an unnecessary expense on the backs of the citizenry.

What bloody good are you and your family to me & mine?"

I am sooo aware of the show's manipulation, I feel callous.

The show does bring home Princess Di's unwinnable position with the royals, but when she first sneaks down to the palace fridge for a bout of overeating, I was thinking, "Oooh, those puddings look good!"

 

And they get the fly-fishing wrong!
Do I care?
I do not.
But someone wrote a tweet of mock-outrage about it, and Slate interviewed him:

What was so egregious about Charles’ fishing?

Casting a fly is one of the things that anybody who has been fishing looks for in anything that involves fishing. There’s a real aesthetic beauty to a well-cast fly. It creates this pleasing shape and it lands without a whisper of a ripple on the water.

Purely the technical aspect of casting his line in such an incompetent manner—this is a man who was brought up with these country pursuits his entire life. His muscle memory wouldn’t allow him to cast as poorly as that.

The way that he treats the poor fish once he’s caught it, that’s properly homicidal. The poor actor.

--slate.com/culture/2020/11/the-crown-fishing-letter-interview-accuracy.html

I far prefer the comedy The Windsors.

Still generally affectionate--One-Day-to-Be-King William is presented as the sane one, and it never shows the queen--
but it mocks the personal foibles & idiocies of Charles & Co. 

Meghan has a crisis of faith when she realizes avocados aren't environmentally sustainable. Camilla seduces Trump for the good of the nation.

And it questions the whole set up. 

 

I'm not saying there are no good arguments for a monarchy. But glowing royals isn't one of them.