‘The Crown’ Season 5 Review Scores Drop Sharply Ahead Of Its Release Date

There are few series that feel like sure things for Netflix, where quality has always been a pretty big rollercoaster over the years, but The Crown has been one of its most reliable prestige series. Until now, perhaps.

The Crown season 5 arrives on November 9, just two days from now, but early reviews are in, and the scores have dropped sharply from all previous seasons, making season 5 a pretty significant outlier:

• The Crown season 1 – 88%
• The Crown season 2 – 89%
• The Crown season 3 – 90%
• The Crown season 4 – 95%
• The Crown season 5 – 64%

As you can see, it’s a pretty dramatic reversal from the upward trend of the last four seasons, and as of right now, a 30% drop from the well-received Diana-focused season last time around. While scores may improve from here as more reviews come in, that’s certainly not a great early indication for the show. Though no matter how it does, the sixth and final season of The Crown has already been greenlit, and will be happening no matter what. It’s unclear if it will end with the death of Queen Elizabeth, who passed away this year.

As for season 5, the main focus is the Diana/Charles divorce drama, where now Diana has been recast and will be played by Elizabeth Debicki, while Charles is Dominic West. This will also be the first season with Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth, and Jonathan Pryce is Prince Phillip.

So what’s wrong with this season? Here’s what some of the early reviews are saying:

The Guardian:

“These new episodes are bitty and often just boring, with Morgan casting around for side plots to hide the fact that everything he has to say about the Windsors has already been said.”

Daily Telegraph:

“This was once a superior costume drama, moments of 20th-century history packaged into an upmarket soap opera. But as the storylines catch up with the present, the show is edging towards trashy telenovela.”

Independent:

“The geopolitical wranglings of post-war reconstruction and the rise of the Soviet Union have been replaced, in the show’s appointed scope, by trivial gossip.”

So too much “gossip”? It’s too “trashy” now? You may notice a pattern with the above outlets, they’re all from the UK. It’s not universal that UK outlets are trashing season 5 while others are not, at least four of the negative reviews are from UK outlets. At the moment, I think I’m seeing two positive UK ones in contrast. Honestly, it may not really make much of a difference. You do run a lot of risk dramatically recasting every two seasons, and real-life events sort of dictate where the story goes, and yes, this era of the royals was badly caught up in Charles/Diana drama. We’ll see how audiences react in two days.

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