Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II in season five of The Crown on Netflix. - NetflixAnnus Horribilis. It’s a Latin phrase used to describe a particularly tumultuous period in the royal family’s history, meaning: horrible year.Certainly, in terms of star power, production value, budget, etc. season five of The Crown has all of the trappings of premiere television. I’m simply finding fewer and fewer things to care about or latch onto as the series drifts closer to the present day.
Imelda Staunton dons the, well, crown, in season five, which starts out in the early 90s. An aging, isolated monarch, QEII finds herself dealing with an escalating internal crisis, as her children, inner circle and literal buildings collapse around her. There is a wonderful mid-season episode, which focuses almost entirely on different characters — namely billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed and his attempts to reach the same lofty heights as the British royals — with the aforementioned family barely showing up at all. It’s instructive that this was one of the highlights.
It’s clear that Harry Styles likes the acting thing. From an appearance in Christopher Nolan’s Second World War epic Dunkirk to the hot mess that was Don’t Worry Darling and its much more interesting press tour, Styles is giving it the old college try. The story is told mostly through flashbacks, as we see older versions of these characters living through the trauma of their past. These components are fine, in that indie movie you randomly watched at The Oxford when we still had that beloved temple to film available.
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye and Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop in Hawkeye on Disney+. - DisneyFor the next few columns, I’m going to try to play catch-up on the recent batch of Marvel shows that I’ve let slip.