Netflix's AI algorithms seem smart enough to figure out I am
about to quit; the streaming service has been bombarding me
with daily emails to finish watching this or that. Who pays
for these emails, ultimately? How much green house gas are
they generating?

One of the last items on my list was "The Crown" season 5,
with Elizabeth Debicki as Diana Spencer. Despite the worst
effort of the writers to peg her as a overly needy nymphomaniac
and embarrassment to her children, the series only comes alive
when she is on screen with her self-deprecating sly humor (her
scenes with Dodi Fayed's father are priceless) or her soulful
ennui. In vain, the writers try to give Prince (now King)
Charles the hero's role, valorizing his charity work while
completely ignoring Diana's and shoehorning him into the
progressive voice, a new dawn of the dynasty (mafia). But it
all comes crashing down in the finale when he presides over
the annexation of ex-British colony Hong Kong by the Chinese
communists. He gives a ludicrous, rosy speech about a people
abandoned to a lawless fate (every other British colony was
granted independence), making him the laughing-stock of
history given what has happened there in the last few years.
(Notably there isn't a single Hong Konger's voice or point
of view in that episode -- it is all about Charles and his precious
Royal yacht.)

But perhaps the clincher is episode nine. Having divorced
Diana he visits her one more time, ostensibly to make
peace but in truth to assign blame. And Diana absolutely
destroys him with a simple accusation. She has married
in good faith, while he has intended her to be a baby-
machine from day one. Unintentionally by the writers,
Charles comes off as the biggest fraud and pompous ass of
the 20th century.

I got curious about how Diana fares in previous season when
portrayed by Emma Corrin. Corrin does fine, even if her Diana
is a utterly charming seductress and nothing more in the first
episode. But the rest of the royals is a horror show: smug,
snobby, utterly classless and deplorable. With their
intellectually-challenged parlor games and even more demented
outdoor hunts, they humiliate Thatcher, managing to make the
social safety-net shredding, privatizing-on-steroid prime
minister sympathetic. (Although true cynics may only root for
the IRA terrorists plotting to blow up the said royals.) For
all their vaunted training, British actresses are in general
unwilling to speaking any accent other than Oxford English.
(Rachel Weisz is so distracting sounding exactly the same
with her twin characters in "Dead Ringers," I haven't gone
past the first episode.) Fortunately Gillian Anderson is
American and she does an amazing job impersonating Thatcher.
The biggest disappointment is Olivia Coleman. While she has
impressive range, she seems to play Queen Elizabeth like all
her own previous characters, sharing no trait with the real
queen or the dignified Imelda Staunton in season 5. Coleman
is so overrated.

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