British family affairs

The Crown (MC-85, NFX) in its fourth season remains an intoxicating mix of history, spectacle, and soap opera.  Though I watched with a subscriber to Majesty magazine – which circulates among her sisters and nieces – and had her at hand for character ID and fact-checking, I did not go into this series with any great antecedent interest in the Windsors et al.  And that despite the fact one of the earliest Christmas presents I can remember receiving was a replica of Elizabeth’s coronation carriage, from my English mother or maybe her mother, long before I got the Roy Rogers’ chuckwagon I really wanted.  Nonetheless, intelligent writing from Peter Morgan, sumptuous production, and outstanding acting have kept me riveted through four seasons.  This season splits the focus between Princess Di, whom I always considered a vapid celebrity, and Margaret Thatcher, always a political monster to me.  In the respective performances of Emma Corrin and Gillian Anderson, however, I found them objects of fascination and perhaps even understanding.  The marvelous Olivia Colman continues as the Queen, passing the baton from Claire Foy along to Imelda Staunton in the forthcoming final two seasons, a truly royal succession.  I’m also eager to see Helena Bonham Carter yield to Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret.  Can’t imagine anyone but Josh O’Connor as sorehead Prince Charles, and it’s still a shock to see him elsewhere, wrestling naked in the mud with another man in a Yorkshire sheepfold, or taking the pulpit as one of Jane Austen’s comically pompous parsons.  Lots of good performances from lesser aristos, and even commoners as well.  Come for the scandal, stay for the history, leave with amused empathy for the poor royals, trapped within their gilded privilege.  I won’t anoint this series with my all-time top ten ranking until it’s complete, but it seems a lock at this point.

As a longtime fan of Nick Hornby, I came in a roundabout way to a week’s free trial of Sundance Now, in order to watch State of the Union (MC-81).  In an interview, he mentioned taking inspiration from High Maintenance to break out of the half-hour or hour-long tv box, and deciding to do a series of ten ten-minute episodes.  In each, a troubled pair meet in a pub for a drink before going in for marital therapy, he a pint of Pride, she a dry white wine .  We never follow them into the session, but in the next week’s pub meeting we find out what happened in the intervening time.  The couple is played by Chris O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike and they are outstanding, individually and in tandem.  They make the most of Hornby’s dialogue, and then some.  Despite its provenance and limited setting, this 100-minute series directed by Stephen Frears makes perfect sense as a movie, and ranks with the best of mature romantic comedies.

In the interests of self-understanding, I look for films, documentaries, or shows that highlight the issues of autism, so when the recent third season of The A Word (MC-76, AMZ) generated comment, I was drawn into the first season, from 2016.  Like In Treatment, this is an outstanding adaptation of an Israeli tv series that takes serious interest in human psychology.  Set in the picturesque English Lake District, it’s an hour-long family drama, with excellent writing and acting all round, and a strong streak of humor in the behavior of an extended dysfunctional family.  Almost all the actors and creators were new to me, so I won’t bother to list names, except to affirm that the ensemble is impeccable.  I’ll have more to say after I watch seasons 2 and 3 (six episodes each), but I want to enter an early recommendation on the record.  I’m not sure how they drew out the performance of the 5-year-old autistic boy, but it is remarkably convincing.  His parents are initially deep in denial about his condition, and about the whole family’s communication problems.  There’s a clueless, recently widowed grandfather; a sweet and sympathetic teenage sister; and an aunt and uncle who’ve moved in next door with their own set of marital and career difficulties.  The family business is a brewery, and the son-in-law is branching out into a rustic gastropub.  The landscape and the village characters round out the appeal of this series, but for me truthfulness was the defining characteristic, sometimes unflattering but always compassionate and perceptive.  Will have more to say when I get through further seasons.