The New York Times has some thoughts about "The Crown" [Media Notes 105]

Sarah Lyall, The Best and Worst (and Dumbest) From 6 Seasons of ‘The Crown’, NYTimes, 12/27/23.

There's a bunch of interesting stuff here. I'll just give you my two favoriate bits, which are at the end of the article.

Crappy Dialog

Who knows how the royal family really talks to each other behind closed doors. But it seems improbable that their real-life conversations include so much long expository commentary on royal protocol, precedent, duty and history — “parentheticals that seem cribbed from Wikipedia,” as Helen Lewis wrote in The Atlantic.

“What would he know of Alfred the Great, the Rod of Equity and Mercy, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth?” Queen Mary barks at Elizabeth in the first season, speaking of Prince Philip, who comes from the exiled Greek royal family. “It’s the Church of England, dear, not the Church of Denmark or Greece.”

Characters on “The Crown” also had a habit of articulating their emotions and laying out their interpersonal conflicts in a way that would be embarrassing even in 21st-century American families, let alone among repressed, stiff-upper-lipped British aristocrats from the past.

Sisters

What a study in contrasts between Queen Elizabeth — so dutiful, so burdened by history — and her sister, Princess Margaret, who appears to have been put on the earth to have heady, ill-conceived love affairs, smoke and drink to excess, and party late into the night on Mustique. “I’d rather die than do exercise,” Margaret says in Season 6, when Elizabeth suggests ways she might cheer herself up after a series of strokes.

But the two are shown sharing a rare intimacy and a deep affection. “Hello, you,” they say by way of greeting, and Elizabeth is a tender, loving nurse to her ailing sister. Their last scene together comes at the end of an exuberant flashback to the night when they slipped out to celebrate with the crowds on V-E Day, in 1945.

At the end of the evening, the two princesses return to Buckingham Palace and Elizabeth asks Margaret — now the older version, played by Lesley Manville — if she is coming inside.

“I’m afraid not,” Margaret says. “But I will always be by your side, no matter what.” It’s the most heartfelt moment in the entire series.

YES.