The first two seasons of "The Crown" produced by Netflix have received unanimous praise and have won awards such as Golden Globe Award for Best Series and Emmy Award for Best Director.
The third season of the recent blockbuster return is not far behind, with a Douban score of 9.3, continuing the good reputation of the first two seasons.
The drama has attracted much attention since the first season, after all, the protagonist of the story is the current Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, who is 93 years old and is known as the "Queen of Super Standby".
Back when she ascended the throne in 1952, she was a 26-year-old young woman. Now that 67 years have passed, she still sits on the throne, becoming the longest reigning monarch in British history, and is really "the prime minister of flowing water, the queen of iron".
The series "The Crown" mainly revolves around the queen's work and life, telling her legendary life.
The revelation of the British royal family in the play has satisfied the curiosity of countless melon-eating masses.
As early as the start of the project, the show has decided to shoot a total of six seasons, basically every two seasons to change a wave of actors.
Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip in the play are played by three different actors, each starring in two seasons, corresponding to the three life stages of youth, middle age and old age.
Claire Foy, who plays the Queen, won both emmy and Golden Globe awards. Matt Smith, the actor who plays Prince Philip, although his appearance is not as handsome as the prototype's youth, but still vividly interprets the character's youthful and crazy appearance.
They impressed audiences so much in the first two seasons that many people were initially uncomfortable with the new cast of the season.
Young actors are already preconceived in the minds of the audience, which will undoubtedly add some difficulty to the subsequent middle-aged actors and elderly actors.
However, the strong cast of cass in the third season still brought many surprises:
The middle-aged queen is played by Olivia Coleman, who won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe this year for the film "The Darling". Previously, in the British drama "London Life", the role of the vicious harem played by her was also full of highlights.
The middle-aged Prince Philip is played by Tobias Menkis, who must add chicken legs to makeup artists and stylists, and if you don't look at the cast list, you can't believe that this is Edmund Tully in "Game of Thrones".
The middle-aged Princess Margaret is played by Helena Bonham Carter, who has starred in the Harry Potter series, Fight Club, The King's Speech and other films.
Josh O'Connor, who played Prince Charles in this drama, has previously performed well in the movie "God's Kingdom" and the British drama "Dreher's Family".
Of course, there are other familiar faces in the play, such as the non-arrogant Tywin Lannister (played by Charles Dans), this time playing the role of Prince Philip's uncle.
And the male protagonist of "The Legend of Merlin" (played by Colin Morgan) has actually turned into a Guardian reporter...
Although the overall appearance of this wave of actors has declined, the acting skills are still online.
The change of actors is actually in line with the setting of "people to middle age" in the play, after all, no one can maintain eternal youth, not to mention that the queen at this time is already a mother of four children.
No, as soon as the season opens, the queen jokes that she has changed from a former girl to an old woman today.
Since there is no way to change the reality of the passage of time, it can only be accepted calmly, which is actually a kind of growth.
The following spoiler warning **********
The third season tells the story of what happened between 1964 and 1977, when the Queen ushered in her midlife crisis.
The once glorious "Empire of the Sun Never Sets" began to decline: the domestic economy was in a serious decline, and the pound was about to face depreciation...
The death of winston Churchill, the Queen's first Prime Minister, heralded that the Queen had no hard-line mentor to rely on, and she did not know where she would lead the British Empire in the future.
Problems such as high housing and land prices, economic decline, and high unemployment have always been a huge hidden danger, and society has gradually bred dissatisfaction with the royal family and the government, and even began to question whether the British royal family has the value of existence.
It's no wonder that at the beginning of the season, Prince Philip expressed his concern: "If this man [Harold Wilson] wins, he will get us out of office." Most of his cabinet was radically opposed to the monarchy. ”
There is some truth to Prince Philip's fears, and Harold Wilson's ascension to the throne may somehow subvert tradition.
After all, the new prime minister's words and deeds seem to be incompatible with high society, and his style of handling things is relatively low-key, and he has no politician's demeanor at all.
The Queen herself was not initially looking forward to the collaboration, and she even felt that the new Prime Minister could not be compared with the four predecessors.
There are indeed some people in the cabinet who are suspicious of the royal family, and in the economic downturn, ordinary families struggle to survive, and the royal family takes the money of British taxpayers every year to pay huge expenses.
The middle-aged queen must calmly face the criticism of the royal family from the outside world, and strive to adapt to her new partner and properly handle the country's affairs.
At that time, Britain was in desperate need of economic assistance from its ally, the United States, otherwise the consequences of the depreciation of the pound would be unimaginable.
However, the prime minister's previous attitude on the Vietnam issue once angered US President Johnson, who did not even come to winston Churchill's funeral.
The only possible way to get financial assistance is for the British Royal Family to step forward and ease relations between the two countries through diplomatic means.
The mission was given to Princess Margaret by chance, and the couple was invited by the President of the United States to a banquet at the White House.
The humorous Princess Margaret is loved by the American media and the public, and people praise her as more energetic and charming than her sister Queen.
She broke the public stereotype of the royal family, which had previously been widely believed to be a conservative presence. But who would have thought that a princess of the British royal family could be so debauched?
At the White House banquet, she sang and danced, and drank wine and told passages, which won the favor of everyone present by virtue of her personal charm.
President Johnson was previously The Vice President of Kennedy, and although he was in a high position, he was the foil of the President's side, and Princess Margaret, who was a green leaf at this time, can be said to be the same disease.
The main reason why he agreed to aid the British was that both of them had some degree of subservience.
The rebellious Princess Margaret, who admired freedom, was not willing to be bound by royal rules. At the same time, she has always longed to be the center of the stage.
Although she believes that she is born to be the material for the protagonist, fate has doomed her to play only a supporting role.
The queen, who has been pushed to the center of the stage, why not envy her dashing and unbridled sister?
She said she was a queen, not a saint. Seeing her sister's journey to the United States so successful, her heart was full of mixed feelings.
Margaret was able to achieve an unexpected diplomatic victory by doing exactly what she thought was unruly. If it were her, she would not be able to complete the task easily, because the queen, who has always been unchanged, could not have made such a bold and outrageous move.
This made the queen begin to consider her sister's request: should she share part of her responsibilities and give her certain powers?
However, Prince Philip's words reminded the Queen:
"The Windsor family needs both glorious people and dull and dutiful monarchs. Every George VI will have an Edward VIII, and every Lilly Bette will have a Margaret by his side. Unable to see Margaret's lucky success, she rewrote the charter rules for it. ”
It has to be said that the middle-aged Prince Philip is obviously much more stable than in his youth, and the relationship between him and the Queen has warmed up this season, and it is not as tense as before.
It is worth mentioning that the Queen and Prince Philip just celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary this month. Many people envy this marriage that has lasted for many years, but the sweetness and bitterness in it are only something they can appreciate.
They each made sacrifices and compromises in this marriage, even at the cost of losing part of themselves:
The queen often had to make difficult choices between the identities of wife and monarch, while the prince lost his job and freedom and had to lay down the dignity of a man to adapt to his identity.
It's not just the Prince who needs to accept his life orientation, Princess Margaret and Prince Charles also live in the Shadow of the Queen.
The bumpy Margaret made many viewers sigh, and the birth order has since determined her status and destiny, after all, the hereditary principle that has lasted for many years cannot be changed, otherwise it will affect the long-term stability of a country.
When it comes to Prince Charles, it is inevitable to think of his emotional entanglement with Princess Diana and Camilla. This season devotes a certain amount of space to the growth experience of Prince Charles, which may make some viewers begin to sympathize with this scumbag.
"If you want to wear the crown, you must bear its weight" is the theme that runs through the entire series, and the crown looks bright and beautiful, but it is also a heavy shackle.
As Tommy once said to the Queen: "The crown is not a decoration to wear, it is a privilege and a burden, and it is accompanied by great expectations and responsibilities." ”
The moment you put on the crown, it means that you have lost the free-will self.
The play successfully portrays a flesh-and-blood Elizabeth II, who, in addition to the queen who is high above, is also an ordinary person who will make mistakes.
The Aberfan disaster mentioned in this season caused heavy casualties that year.
The narrative of this event in the play is similar to the 1952 smog incident in London in the first season, which depicts the characters in chronological order and presents the reactions and attitudes of all parties to the disaster.
When she heard about the major accident in the mining village of South Wales, the Queen did not feel that the royal family should go to the scene of the accident at first, she thought that the Queen's presence would affect the work of rescuers
Even when the Prime Minister suggested that the Queen go to the scene to comfort the people, she unceremoniously refused.
Later, the Labour government did not want to take responsibility for the accident, and in order to calm the public anger, they could only divert public attention, targeting the queen who failed to rush to the scene at the first time, accusing her of indifference and the indifference of high society.
In order to quell the negative reports, the Queen was forced to go to the scene of the disaster herself.
When she returned, she despised the act of pretending to wipe her tears and confessed to the prime minister her emotional flaws: she grew up with a heart of stone, and she did not cry when she went to the hospital with her parents to visit the wounded during World War II.
As the Prime Minister put it: "We can't be to everyone's taste and be our true selves." ”
Emotional defects are an advantage for the queen, meaning that she has a strong character quality and the ability to calm the crisis, which is exactly what a monarch should have.
Although the Prime Minister told the Queen that people in high positions like them hardly need humanity, it is rare that the Queen deeply regrets this mistake:
According to the Queen's cronies, the Queen's late response to this disaster was her greatest regret as a monarch. Since 1966, she has returned to the village several times, far more than any other member of the royal family. ”
It can be seen that the queen is still the one who struggles between humanity and royal power, and it is rare that she can have the courage to admit her mistakes.
Overall, the show is well-made as a whole, and it has achieved the ultimate in costume styling, photographic composition, performance, music, etc. The third season of the return still respects history in the details, and the restoration of famous scenes is remarkable, which shows the intentions of the main creative staff.
Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher, who are well known to viewers, are expected to appear in the next season, and what unknown past events will be revealed in the fourth season of next year's broadcast? Let's wait and see!