ROYAL DESCENT

Season 5 of The Crown,” on Netflix.

- INKOO KANG

If “The Crown” is remembered as a great series, instead of just a greatlooking one, it’ll likely owe that reputation to its spectacular fourth season. The first three volumes of the lavishly budgeted Netflix series were often snoozy and uneven, presenting portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and the rest of the Royal Family that were as rigid as the institution they served. Season 4 jolted the series awake, with the introduction of two outsiders, Diana Spencer and Margaret Thatcher, whose perspectives clarified the Windsors’ blinkered privilege and their warped but undeniable humanity. At last, “The Crown” became the ambitious if staunchly royalist palace drama that its creator, Peter Morgan, had intended.

Few TV premiéres have been as fervently anticipated as that of The Crown’’s fifth season—the first following the Queen's death, in September, at the age of ninety-six. But the ten episodes, released on November 9th, are a startling letdown. Season 4 kicked off with a literal bang; early on, a boat with a member of the Royal Family on board was bombed by the I.R.A. Season 5, set in the nineties, also launches with a vessel: the Queen’s royal yacht, Britannia, which a young Elizabeth describes as dependable and constant, capable of weathering any storm.” By 1991, the moldering ship requires a multimillion-pound renovation—ideally on the government's dime—as the Queen, now in her sixties, tells Prime Minister John Major. Such a heavy-handed metaphor for the monarchy’s decline might be forgiven were it a minor plotline. But Morgan hangs on to it like a worn-out security blanket.