Watching the enjoyable Brontë drama To Walk Invisible the other day on television, I was brought up short when Charlotte told Emily that their books would be ‘rubbished’ by male critics in London. Such anachronisms crop up in all period dramas, but would be easy to fix if someone with an ear for language was asked to skim through the script before it was filmed.
Which brings us to The Crown. I think we all enjoyed Claire Foy’s shot at the Queen’s voice and Vanessa Kirby’s smoky Princess Margaret. (Not sure why they gave Prince Philip a teddy-boy haircut. Surely all they have to do is copy the photographs?) But The Crown also had some ‘going right down to the wire’, ‘it’s a learning curve’, moments. Not literally those ones, but almost as bad. If you are spending £100 million on a series, as the producers are said to have done on this one, wouldn’t ten grand an episode to take out the clunkers be a worthwhile investment?
This is an extract from Sebastian Faulks’ diary, which appears in this week’s Spectator
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