The Crown -- A Review

Kočka watching The Crown

My cat Kočka paid little or no attention to the second season of the Netflix Original series The Crown. In fact, he only watched a small portion of one episode. In this episode a large contingent of soldiers accompanied by bagpipes marches ahead of the queen as she proceeds to Balmoral, her castle in Scotland. Kočka has a thing for bagpipes. They will draw him from wherever he is in the house. He also loves Celtic Woman. Perhaps he was a Celt in one of his previous lives.

The Crown created and written by Peter Morgan and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix, is a biographical drama about Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. (Please note: drama not documentary.)

Claire Foy plays Elizabeth, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Matt Smith plays Philip. He is probably more famous for being the eleventh Doctor in the long-running BBC series Doctor Who. (My daughter's favorite Doctor!)

The first season was about Queen Elizabeth's life beginning with her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 and running through 1955. The second season begins in 1956 with England's problems in Egypt and runs through 1964.

I watched that first season and enjoyed it thoroughly. So much so, in fact, that I looked forward to the second season with great anticipation. It filled Downton Abbey's place in my television viewing life quite nicely. If you pay attention, you'll see several actors from Downton.

Both seasons of The Crown are filled with opulent homes and furnishings and, what to me were unusual and on occasion mean-spirited, formalities that the Royals had to live with.

I probably know more about Elizabethan English history than I do about modern British history. I may have been alive during Elizabeth II's reign so far, but I've been much more vested in American goings-on than in Britain's. So I knew little of Britain's colonial activities in the Middle East.

The second season covers times that you'd think I'd remember, but I guess I wasn't paying attention.

What I know of British activities in India and Israel/Palestine during the late 40s is more than they discussed in the series at all. I suppose because the series actually focuses on Elizabeth's own activities and those political crises were in her father's time rather than hers.

It's interesting to me to realize that the woman I always thought of as 'grandmotherly' and 'dowdy' with her purses and hats that looked like a hydrangea on her head wasn't always all that old. Of course in the 60s when I was paying attention to the Brits, it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Twiggy. Politics and royalty figured not at all.

And I don't remember the Kennedys going to England. That must have been during his "ich bin ein berliner" visit to Germany.

In the scene when the Kennedys are first introduced to the queen, one thing especially caught my attention. Someone in the scene said sotto voce as though shocked "she didn't curtsy." That struck me as particularly odd. Why would they expect a woman who was not a subject of the queen to curtsy?

And I certainly don't remember the Kennedys having the kind of relationship with each other that this series portrays. No spoilers here. You'll have to watch for yourself. But the portrayal of Elizabeth's reaction to President Kennedy's murder, brought tears to my eyes. I'd never before even considered how people outside the U.S. reacted to that horrific event.

The writing and acting throughout both seasons is excellent. And the directing ... I was especially taken with the use of silences in the dialogue.

I don't know how historically accurate the series is. I do think it would be interesting to know what the British Royals think of it. Some of them don't get the rosiest of treatments.

The thing for me is that The Crown is a good story, well told. And if it's not exactly all true, that's okay. I certainly won't hold any of the real people to the historical fiction I enjoyed binge-watching.

And by-the-bye the video of the making of a crown during the opening titles is fascinating.

My Daughter's Ruining My Life -- Nonfiction

image from spoilertv.com

My daughter is ruining my life. She has infected me with Binge-Watching. It's a thing. There's even a Wikipedia entry for it. Click here.

There was a time when television series were available once. And once a week, at that. I watched Upstairs Downstairs one episode a week. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. I, Claudius. M.A.S.H. Northern Exposure. There was no Hulu or Netflix. No Amazon Prime.

I watched Downton Abbey for years. One episode a week. Even when I got the season's DVD early for contributing to my local Public Broadcasting Service affiliate. I would watch on Sunday night. Then I would watch that episode online at RMPBS again during the week -- maybe a couple of times. There were so many details that I wouldn't catch the first time through. I only watched the DVDs while I waited for each new season.

Grace tried to get me hooked on Orange Is the New Black. But there was a time when I attended meetings with inmates in the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center when it was in Oklahoma City. I understand they now have a newer facility in a small town east of the City. Let me just say prison is no fit place for anybody to live. You don't get to choose your roommate and if you get a difficult one, you damn well better be sure she takes her meds properly. Somehow I just couldn't get into the 'humor' of Orange.

You know how folks offer you a month's subscription free? Well, I got started watching Bosch on my free month of Amazon Prime. It's a police detective show based on Michael Connelly's novels, most of which I've read. In spite of the habitual cliff-hanger endings to each episode, I started out watching one show at a time. Often with several evenings in between. Toward the end of the second season I found myself watching two at a time. My husband liked that series, too.

Did you know there's something called commitment rings? You and your partner each wear one and they keep you from watching a TV series without each other so no one 'cheats' by watching ahead. (This one's for you Doctor Who fans. You know who you are.)

So, what started this rant? The Newsroom which Grace recommended. I've finished the first two seasons and am well into the third. In what? Less than a week.

Look -- I'm supposed to be writing a book, a literary piece of short fiction, a murder mystery short story featuring my senior citizen walking group crime solvers, and these blog posts. My father has dementia which presents as severe anxiety (among other things) if he doesn't see me daily and he lives thirty minutes away from my house unless there's traffic which there almost always is. (It's just a good thing he's cute.) I have a bad cat and clothes to take out of the dryer and hang up because I do not iron. (It's a good thing the cat is cute, too.)

And I've been reading the same book for a week. I'm a writer. I have to read. There are too many books out there I've never read and new ones coming out every week. Maybe every day. I don't have time to spend a whole week reading one book.

Binge-watching TV has no place in my world!

Did I mention HBO NOW? You don't have to have it in your cable package. I can get it for a monthly fee of $14.99 without upgrading my bare-bones Spanish Language Cable Package. I know. I know. No one in my house speaks Spanish, but that's another story.

Gotta get back to The Newsroom. I'll write a review when I finish watching.

I'll read the book when I go to bed.

Rita the Danish Television Show -- A Review

image from shaulaevans.com

As far as I'm concerned, Rita is a five-star TV series. It is available streaming from Netflix.

It is funny and sad and touching and raucous and different from anything available on American TV. It is, however, not for people with tender ears or delicate sensibilities. I'd rate it M -- for language, sex, smoking and other drugs, and controversial themes.

The series is in Danish and in Danish the F-word sounds the same in English. So you hear f*** and (since it's subtitled for those of us who are Danish-challenged) we also see it written out. Oddly enough the Danish word "troll" is translated in the subtitles as "ogre." "Okay" is "okay"; for our "yes" they say "ja" with J's pronounced like Y in "yes" which sounds very like the English slang "yeah"; and "yeah" in English  sounds like "yip" or "yips" in Danish -- probably spelled with that Y-sounding J.

Enough with the quote marks, already!

Rita is a dysfunctional mother from a dysfunctional home. Her own children have their problems, but function reasonably well, considering. She uses insensitive language in socially sensitive settings, has indiscriminate sex with unlikely and politically incorrect men, and does most of her introspection while smoking in her school's girls' room.

Did I mention that Rita is a school teacher in a small Danish school? Teaching is the main point of this series and the one place where Rita gets it right.

She's the right teacher for children who need the right teacher. And the right friend for people who need the right friend. Sometimes her advice is a questionable, but things always turn out right --  
sort of.

I love this series and I am sorry there are only three seasons available. There is speculation about a fourth season, but nothing concrete on that front yet. Here's hoping!

Reviews and Ratings

When are the Ratings Stars Over-Rated?

 

     Mysteries and Science Fiction are the two fiction genres I read most often. And that is true of movies I watch, too. I have not standardly rated books I've read or movies I've watched. Doing so has always seemed a little too close to being a critic. Generally speaking, I hold critics in the same high disregard as Emergency Room docs.

 

    Having recently been exposed to some excellent ER docs, and preparing to publish my first novel, I guess it's time to mend my pretentious ways and join the ranks of the amateur critics. All the experts say I need to get my name before the public. Those experts ask me what platforms I'm on. Pinterest? Twitter? Facebook? And I say that most of the time my platform of choice is Earth. They are not amused.

   

    So now -- Netflix, I will rate the shows I see, and I will review them so my name and opinions will be out there. (I'm not sure Netflix is what they mean by 'platform.' But the opportunity pops up every time I watch a show and I watch quite a few shows. Where else would I get my fix of British crime mysteries?)

 

    And Goodreads, if I can figure out how or get my daughter to show me, I'll rate and review the books I read.

 

    Twitter and Pinterest? I don't think so. (You should read that last sentence in the familiar sing-song of disdain.) Who knows, maybe someday I'll see the error of my ways and join those 'platforms,' too.

 

    That brings us to the Ratings Stars. How to do this. How? Easy -- right? Right, if I didn't like or hated the book or show, it's one or two stars. Then things get sticky.

 

    The African Queen, Downton Abbey, and  Prime Suspect are five stars. A Prayer for Owen Meany and the Wheel of Time series are five stars. I will watch and read them again and again. And there are many titles out there that I would rate five stars.

 

    But the vast majority of books I read and shows I watch are three stars. When you hover over the

3 Stars rating it says "I liked it." So why do I feel as though I'm dissing the work by rating it only three stars? Maybe it's from my public school days when a C was not good enough. B's were a little more acceptable, but anything less than an A was suspect.

 

     I thoroughly enjoy Diana Mott Davidson's mysteries and those by Nevada Barr. Michael Connelly and John Lescroart get good solid 3 Stars from me and I will always come back to them. With this in mind, when you see I've rated something three stars, that means I liked it. And I will seek out more work by that writer or actor or director.

    If I give something four stars that means there is something outstanding about it, but I doubt I will watch or read it again -- maybe like Boston Legal or Dan Brown's  Da Vinci Code it's well-done and incorporates surprise or maybe even shock, but by virtue of having watched or read it that surprise is lost. As great as they are, my 4 Stars will not bring me back with the same degree of passion and wonder as those magnificent 5 Stars.