Week 1: Overrated!?!?

 Heya, so I watched around half of the first season this week (4 episodes) and I'm not going to lie, this is not my favorite show so far. Here's a bit of a synopsis of what I've watched so far (I don't know if this qualifies as spoilers but spoiler alert ig if you plan on watching this):

- Princess *not Queen yet* Elizabeth and Prince Phillip get married... her family isn't too happy about this but they have a nice wedding. Her dad's health is declining. Winston Churchill shows up to her wedding and everyone is clearly more occupied with politics since Churchill is really salty he didn't win the reelection.

- Churchill gets reelected and King Edward has lung cancer but doesn't tell his family. His health is very much declining though and eventually, he dies :(

- Elizabeth and Phillip travel all over the Commonwealth to set themselves up to take their place. More about this later.

- There's a lot of tension between Elizabeth and Phillip about power and the struggle within their marriage. This really was not that interesting.

I know I'm supposed to keep this short so I'm just going to talk a bit about the Commonwealth part. The show starts in 1947 when much of Britain's colonies (or former colonies now) were still in its control but we hardly see any mention of this. There is the segment in Episode 2 where Elizabeth is touring all over the world to visit the Commonwealth. My problem with this though is that there is very little acknowledgment of the many parts of the world that were suffering under colonialism during this time and we see a lot of romanticization of England's colonial past which was brutal in many cases. Considering this show was written quite recently, I feel like it participates in a lot of the imperial nostalgia that there is about Britain's glorious past. Obviously, this is still a show and not a historical documentary but that part just irked me a little. I'm really hoping though that this gets more interesting as it goes because there is a lot of family drama in the first bit that is really not that interesting (my dad is watching this with me and he's a lot more invested in this than I am). Anywho, I'm looking forward to watching the next half of the season in the coming week!

Comments

  1. Florence LinNovember 3, 2022 at 6:45 AM

    technically they arenot spoilers if they already happened in real life

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JanakiNovember 3, 2022 at 6:46 AM

      ok true. i feel like wikipedia is more reliable than this show though...

      Delete
  2. Zoya A.November 3, 2022 at 6:48 AM

    Very interested to read how British imperialism is portrayed through the scope of British monarchy as you continue watching the show. I wonder if Queen Elizabeth would watch a show about her family.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AditiNovember 3, 2022 at 7:36 AM

    I agree, I remember some of the show's plotlines not being super captivating (especially at first) and I see what you mean by "imperial nostalgia." In my memory it's aesthetically so good tho, if a little gloomy. I look forward to reading more of your takes!

    ReplyDelete

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