SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Crown (Nov. 15, Netflix)
The fourth season of this classy drama is my favourite since it first knocked my socks off in 2016. It has given me that “I must watch the next episode right now” feeling I didn’t necessarily get from the second and third seasons, although they were still excellent.
For one thing, there’s a wealth of historical events in this instalment (the season begins in 1979, which truly is history no matter how current it might still feel to those of us who lived through it).
There’s the assassination of Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance), the Falklands War, the Buckingham Palace break-in during which intruder Michael Fagan (sympathetically played by Tom Brooke, of “Preacher” and “Sherlock”) chatted with the Queen in her bedroom, but the season really belongs to two women and how they shaped events.
First, the always wonderful Gillian Anderson plays Margaret Thatcher and shows us the woman behind the politician, who translated her adoration for her up-by-his-bootstraps father into a tough love prescription for Great Britain and austerity policies that still resonate today.
Of course, no one really knows what Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) thought of Thatcher, but the series depicts the monarch as so disquieted by the unemployment and unrest stirred up by Thatcher’s policies and, particularly, her disdain for the Commonwealth and refusal to support sanctions against Apartheid-era South Africa that she gives her tacit consent to a Sunday Times article saying she finds Thatcher “uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive.”
The article is real; the rest is likely just Peter Morgan exercising his creative licence.
But the woman who, in the show as in life, really draws our attention and our sympathy is Diana, Princess of Wales, played by Emma Corrin (“Pennyworth”), who nails the late princess’s “Shy Di” mannerisms.
The portrayal will do nothing to diminish the cult of “Princess Diana” or make people feel warmer toward Prince Charles (played by Josh O’Connor). The show’s take is of a young woman who really thought she had found her Prince Charming only to run headlong into his devotion to Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell).
The series shows Diana’s own dalliances and her battle with bulimia (with appropriate trigger warnings for viewers), but she is more victim than perpetrator, whereas Charles comes off as selfish and insensitive as he singlemindedly pursues his fantasy of a life with married mother of two Camilla no matter the cost; as well as petty as he becomes increasingly jealous of Diana’s growing popularity.
Nor does the Queen present as particularly sympathetic to the struggling Diana, offering stiff upper lip “keep calm and carry on” advice instead of kindness and understanding. Even Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), who we see weathering her own loneliness and depression, does nothing to help a fellow sufferer.
“The Crown” has always been a family drama underneath the pomp and circumstance. This season, it’s a particularly sad one but no less absorbing for the pain it portrays.
Dash & Lily (Nov. 10, Netflix)
I’m usually a bit of a grinch when it comes to young adult-oriented entertainment, but “Dash & Lily” managed to worm their way under my skin. Perhaps it’s because the tweeness of the holiday-themed romance series is balanced by dollops of cynicism.
You see, Dash (Austin Abrams, “Euphoria,” “This Is Us”) hates Christmas; he calls it the “most detestable time of the year.” Lily (Midori Francis, “Good Boys”) loves Christmas — or at least she did until she learned her parents and grandfather were going out of town and her brother (Troy Iwata) was preoccupied with his new boyfriend.
Too shy and self-conscious to meet guys the usual way, literature lover Lily leaves a red notebook on a shelf at New York City’s famous Strand bookstore with a series of dares for whoever finds it, which obviously is equally bookish Dash, a child of divorce who’s soured on people in general since his girlfriend left him.
And so it goes, with Dash and Lily falling for each other sight unseen as they trade the notebook back and forth, while certain realities — including the reappearance of people from their pasts — threaten to derail their romantic fantasies of each other.
Of the two, Lily is the more fully drawn. Her insecurities, spawned by the meanness of other kids in middle school, leaven her sweetness and give her some depth.
Another thing to love about the show (based on the David Levithan and Rachel Cohn book series) are its glimpses of New York all decked out for the season. Seeing places I’m unlikely to revisit in person for some time to come, like the Union Square Holiday Market, the Rink at Rockefeller Center or Fifth Avenue store windows, warmed my heart.
Fight to the Finish (Nov. 11, 9 p.m., History)
Lest we forget is the Remembrance Day motto, something that becomes ever more a threat for the two World Wars as we move further away in time and people with direct connections to them die off.
In Barry Stevens’ documentary — which arrives 75 years after the end of World War II — more than 50 veterans from all over Canada, as well as one Holocaust survivor, tell frank and heartbreaking stories of what it was like.
Supplemented by archival footage and photographs, the men’s (and women’s) memories are still vivid, encompassing not just sights but sounds and smells, from the Battle of Hong Kong and imprisonment in Japanese PoW camps, through the Blitz, the Battle of the Atlantic, Dieppe, the Canadian campaign in Sicily, D-Day, the Battle of the Scheldt and the final battles in Germany, including the discovery of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There are pleasant memories too, of the liberation of France and the Netherlands, Victory in Europe Day and the return to Canada.
It’s emotional and haunting territory, but — having had a grandfather who fought in the First World War and another who fought in the Second — I believe it deserves to be remembered.
B.C. vet Bernard Finestone calls war “the failure of humanity, but when situations like Hitler present themselves 600,000 Canadians like me have to do something about it.”
And for a look at how Hitler became the threat he did, PBS has “Rise of the Nazis” Nov. 10 at 9 p.m.
Temple (Nov. 15, 9 p.m., Showcase)
The idea of a doctor starting an “underground” medical clinic doesn’t necessarily sound like the most promising — or believable — idea for a drama, but a strong cast and non-linear storytelling help sell “Temple.”
Mark Strong plays Daniel Milton, a respected surgeon who’s been driven to desperate measures by a tragedy in his personal life. He teams up with Lee (Daniel Mays), a maintenance worker with an obsession with the end of civilization and access to an expanse of rooms and tunnels deep under the Temple subway station in London, England.
There’s a necessary suspension of disbelief in the idea of a secret clinic operating below one of the world’s busiest and, one presumes, most electronically monitored cities, but Strong and Mays manage to sell it.
Daniel, already used to playing god in a sense, has a powerful emotional incentive for pursuing off-the-grid medical research while Lee, who’s what’s known as a prepper, seems fairly rational when you consider what the world is currently going through. (To be fair, the series, based on a Norwegian original, debuted in Britain long before the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The question is how long the clinic can stay off the radar, particularly since one of the patients, Jamie (Tobi King Bakare), is being hunted for a robbery that led to the grievous injury of a police officer.
Other cast members include Carice van Houten (Melisandre in “Game of Thrones”) and Catherine McCormack.
Odds and Ends
Unbridled capitalism isn’t the most popular subject these days, but “Industry” (Nov. 9, 10 p.m., HBO/Crave) at least attempts to freshen things up by showing the goings-on inside a London investment bank from the point of view of the newbies who are fighting for permanent jobs there. The most interesting of these are the two women in the bunch, smart outsider Harper (Myha’la Herrold) and rich girl Yasmin (Marisa Abela).
“A Teacher” (Nov. 10, 10 p.m., FX) depicts what happens when a young female educator (Kate Mara, “Pose,” “House of Cards”) crosses boundaries with a high school senior (Nick Robinson, “Love, Victor”).
CBC’s “The Nature of Things” (Nov. 13, 9 p.m.) has an episode that will surely resonate with parents during this pandemic: “Kids vs. Screens,” hosted by biologist Dan Riskin, which explores the potential harms being caused by children’s attachment to their smartphones, tablets and video games, and what parents can do about it.
Apple TV Plus has the Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer doc “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds” (Nov. 13) about meteors that fell to Earth and their impact on science, history and mythology. It’s also got the animated series “Doug Unplugs” and “Becoming You,” a documentary series narrated by Olivia Colman about child development around the world, releasing on Nov. 13.
Acorn TV has “The South Westerlies” (Nov. 9), an Irish dramedy about an environmental consultant (Orla Brady, “Into the Badlands,” “Fringe”) going undercover in a small town to deal with objections to a wind farm.
OUTtv has the premiere of “MixedUp” (Nov. 11, 9 p.m.), an exploration of what it means to be BIPOC and LGBTQ+ by director, actor, singer, dancer and visual artist Howard J. Davis, a.k.a. HAUI.
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