Sets appeal: the distracting beauty of TV backdrops

Never mind the regal and political tussles depicted in The Crown; the real action comes with the closing credits. This is the kind of list of job titles of which many feature films can only dream. In addition to the seven art directors of various ranks, there is an art department co-ordinator, art department assistant, five set decorators, two set decoration runners and a set decoration prop driver. Not to mention a drapes master, drapes master assistant, one florist and two home economists.

You don’t get the stand-ins for Buckingham Palace, Balmoral and all the other stately piles of multiple turrets and crenelations looking as good as they do without armies of behind-camera personnel. Netflix is cagey about how much is spent on the series, but it is rumoured that each episode costs more than £9 million — and every penny is visible in every gorgeous shot.

Yet, whisper it softly, perhaps television today has even become too distractingly beautiful for its own good? Do we truly care what the characters are saying any more, or are we too busy looking over their shoulders at the Instagram-perfect chandeliers, photo frames and flower arrangements? Certainly few exchanges of dialogue in The Crown will stay with me in the same way as that mesmerising, wordless sequence of the pre-marriage Lady Diana roller-skating along the chandelier- and portrait-bedecked corridors of Buckingham Palace.