Barnabas File

The Royal Family at the end of Season Two Season Two of The Crown does not quite measure up to Season One.     Perhaps it is because I miss Winston Churchill (John Lithgow) or because this season requires viewers to deal with the continuing affairs of Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) and the boyish adventures of Prince Phillip (Matt Smith), but a handful of episodes are memorable.     Even so, Netflix’s The Crown is the still the best television series available.    Two of the best episodes of the season show the grit of the heroine and both involve Americans. In “Vergangenheit,” Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) is brought to a crisis of faith when her uncle, the Duke of Windsor (Alex Jennings), seeks a return to Great Britain and restoration to a place of influence.  Past events are disclosed that indicate that the former king once plotted with the Nazi High Command to become a puppet ruler if the nation were conquered by Germany. ...

My Netflix subscription this year was a good investment if I had only watched one series:  The Crown .  Although I have viewed several of the streaming service’s original series,  this is the best so far. The series plans to depict the life of Queen Elizabeth II.   The first season begins with her wedding in 1947 and goes through the first years of her reign up to 1955.  Although this all happened within my lifetime, I would have to call it historical drama.  Visually extravagant with meticulous attention to period costumes and furnishings, the series rarely makes a misstep.  The series functions on two levels—family drama and politics.  On one level, we have the soap opera of family relationships impacted by both royal privilege and responsibility.  The other level is the political and historical realities of the period.  For example, in “Gloriana” (episode 10), Prime minister Anthony Eden (Jeremy Northam) is deal...