Revelations in Harry and Meghan's "at home" docuseries could prove a headache for Buckingham Palace. Photo / Getty Images.
Revelations in Harry and Meghan's "at home" docuseries could prove a headache for Buckingham Palace. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
The Queen and TV have never been bosom buddies.
In the late 1960s, TV was the medium she chose to try to sell the royal family to the post-war Youthquake via the controversial show Royal Family. All the world saw was a family with far too much tartan on their hands and their sovereign attempting to make salad dressing like a suburban hausfrau. So off that footage went to the (locked) Windsor archives.
In the 1980s, her son Prince Edward convinced the Queen to let him have a crack at TV, getting Prince Andrew, his wife Sarah, Duchess of York and the redoubtable Princess Anne to dress up in mock Tudor wardrobes for a charity appearance on an appallingly cheesy game show. Unsurprisingly, something that involved Meatloaf, Sheena Easton and plastic hams only resulted in abject humiliation.
When the 1990s rolled around, TV really turned on Her Majesty, first when Prince Charles confessed to the world his zip had come unstuck during his marriage and a year later where Diana, Princess of Wales staged her own prime time inquisition.
But now comes the really bad news because TV, the Queen's postmodern nemesis, is back to make her life a living hell, specifically Netflix. (Oh and a book too.)
At some stage in November, the streaming giant, which has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value in recent months, will release the fifth series of their heavily dramatised, often creatively scripted royal soapie The Crown. While previous seasons have hardly been a walk in the park for the Queen, painting her family as damaged, repressed and animal-mad, this year's offering looks set to be another sort of misery entirely.
Imelda Staunton films scenes for The Crown. Photo / Getty Images.
If ever there was a period of time that Her Majesty would heartily not want to revisit, it would have to be the '90s. Her favourite castle ended up on fire (Queen problems amiright?), three of her four children's marriages fell apart, and she agreed, for the first time in history, that the sovereign would pay tax. (And she still had all that fire damage to pay for too).
And this is, of course, exactly what the next lot of The Crown will slavishly focus on.
At the heart of this season will be none other than Diana, Princess of Wales and her Icarus-like flight from monarchical and marital martyr to a one-woman royal resistance force. Starring Australian Elizabeth Debicki as the doomed princess, the 10-episode arc will take viewers from the early '90s, when she and husband Prince Charles formally separated, to her shocking death in 1997.
Very likely, Her Majesty's treatment of the deeply troubled Princess, her handling of the War of the Wales and then the seismic aftershocks of her death are all about to be rendered in high-definition technicolour.
Princess Diana and The Queen. Photo / Getty Images.
For the writers of The Crown, it's rich pickings; for Her Majesty, I bet she would prefer to endure a low vegan, raw lunch with all of Prince Philip's chinless German relatives than to have this all dredged up for global audiences.
The days before Diana's funeral in September 1997 are widely held to be one of the lowest points of the Queen's 70-year reign. She was quite simply reviled by a reeling British public who saw a stony-hearted woman who had treated their Princess shabbily in life and death.
It would take years for that grim chapter to disappear into the rearview mirror, but now thanks to the creative whizbangering and nine-figure budgets of Netflix, this miserable episode is about to land with a thud back in public consciousness.
For those of us old enough to remember that period of time, it will be a refresher about one of the darkest periods in palace history, while for younger generations, already much less likely to support the monarchy (and more likely to be sympathetic to the Sussexes), this series will offer a crash course in some of the Queen's biggest – and coldest – mistakes. They are about to learn all about how the palace watched on as Diana endured an eating disorder and self-harmed, and all the while suffered inside the claustrophobic confines of a miserable marriage.
However, I said "shows" and there is more than one offering on Netflix's autumn slate that could spell serious trouble for the royal house.
This week Page Six reported that the company wants to screen Harry and Meghan's "at home" docuseries before the end of the year.
While various Windsors have, over the years, authored children's books, given bombshell interviews, graced magazine covers to bang on about "new chapters" and appeared in very carefully managed documentary outings, never, ever has a member of the royal family opened their doors for cameras for long stretches of time.
Whether the Sussexes have agreed to the TV series because they are frantically keen to promote themselves as humanitarians; whether this is some sort of political campaign launch on Meghan's behalf; or whether Netflix strongarmed them into it after having forked over truckloads of cash, for whatever reason (and there are probably many more) the Sussexes are about to break one of the last royal taboos.
Like David Attenborough crouched on the Serengeti, we could be about to get, for the first time ever, members of the royal family in the wild. ('The Duchess opens the fridge; no almond milk. Her mate, the Duke, is about to get a telling orrfff...')
Who is not going to tune in to watch the gory intersection of the 21st century's greatest contribution to cultural innovation – the reality series – and two obstreperous individuals who seem to have no problem talking about themselves?
The sticking point here for Buckingham Palace is not propriety or protocol or some sort of pearl-clutching aversion to publicity: It's what Harry and Meghan might say, earnestly staring down the barrel of the camera, about his family back in the UK and what fresh bombshells they might be about to drop on the Queen.
Will we get to watch footage of them looking anguished when they learned that they would be excluded from the Buckingham Palace balcony during the Platinum Jubilee? Just might a crew have been on hand when it was revealed in February this year that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall is set to be Queen? You get the idea.
Silence and tact are not qualities we have seen from the Sussexes and with their, possibly most valuable paymaster, needing to be kept happy, what sort of flurry of revelations and jaw-dropping disclosures might be incoming?
Neither the streaming service nor the couple can afford for this series not to be a huge hit.
What might be revealed in the Sussexes' upcoming docuseries? Photo / Getty Images.
But before you take a breath here, remember both of these series will be coming, theoretically, hot on the heels of Harry's memoir. (Earlier this month The Sun raised the prospect that the publication might be delayed as the title is not on the publisher's list of new books however Penguin Random House pushed back, saying: "We don't put every book on the list.")
Even more so than their docuseries, just how much might Harry be about to unload about his upbringing and his life inside what he has previously described as "a mix between The Truman Show and living in a zoo"? It seems highly unlikely based on his past form when it comes to speaking out about his family that it will be a warm and cuddly romp down memory lane.
Keep in mind here, the timing. These three big releases – the two Netflix series and the book – are reported to all be landing one after another and across a span of possibly only 60 days or so.
Taken together, The Crown, the Sussexes' TV series and Harry's memoir have the makings of a PR bloodbath for the palace.
Even if all of these outings are only half as bad than they could be, the impact in London could be devastating.
At stake are all the gains that the Queen and co have made in the decades since the time of Diana, from the careful preparation of the public for Charles and Camilla to take the throne, to the push, led by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, to reposition the monarchy as a genuinely useful and relevant part of modern British life.
Even without the prospect of a fresh round of dirty laundry airing or the Sussexes popping up on TV screens, this is already an iffy time for the monarchy. The Firm has barely managed to limp its way past the horrors of Prince Andrew's plummet from grace, the melodramatics of Megxit, and the Queen's mystery health woes.
How much more can the monarchy take before the whole thing capsizes? How many more hits can the royal house sustain and keep standing?
Here's one TV-related titbit to leave you on. During the pandemic, the Queen binged her way through Line Of Duty from her Windsor sitting room. Wonder why a series about nefarious forces inside a proud institution struck such a chord?
