Television

The Crown (Netflix) ★★★★★

Rating: 5.0
Author: James Mcnamara

by James McNamara •

ABR Arts • 12 December 2016

Television

The Crown (Netflix) ★★★★★

by James McNamara •

ABR Arts • 12 December 2016

When a friend suggested over dinner that I watch Netflix’s The Crown, I responded with an earthier version of ‘Ten hours about an unelected monarch? Nope.’ It made sense, of course, for the US streaming giant to drop $100ish million on a television drama about Her Maj: Wolf Hall did well, Downton Abbey was finished, and America had just gone all King George and elected a lunatic in a golden palace. But I didn’t think it was for me.

Then I was reminded that, while I don’t think our head of state’s qualification should be ‘How posh is your dad?’, I admire Her Maj as a person. Then I learned Claire Foy – who played Anne Boleyn so exquisitely in Wolf Hall – plays the queen. And then I heard John Lithgow plays Winston Churchill. ‘John Lithgow?’ I spat, misting gin across the table. ‘3rd Rock From the Sun, American John Lithgow?’ This, I thought, I had to see. So I toddled off and switched it on.

Reader, it was glorious. I felt a like a 100-kilo 6 foot 4 Lizzie Bennet standing shocked, Darcy’s letter in hand, realising the prejudice that had blinded me to wonder.

James McNamara

James McNamara is an Australian television writer based in Los Angeles. His television work includes comedy and drama writers rooms for the Academy Award-winning See-Saw Films, Matchbox Pictures/NBC Universal, Foxtel, ABC, Porchlight Films, and Endemol Shine, and developing shows for Goalpost Pictures and Playmaker Media/Sony Pictures. McNamara received ABR’s third Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship for his long-form essay, ‘The Golden Age of Television?’ (ABR, April 2015), praised by Clive James as ‘a global contribution to cultural analysis’. McNamara’s essays and criticism have also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, and The Spectator.

Born in Western Australia in 1982, McNamara received degrees in English and Law from the University of Western Australia, graduated in screenwriting from AFTRS, and holds a doctorate in English from Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar. Before becoming a writer, McNamara was a litigator specialising in international disputes at a top-tier US law firm. He was recently named a BAFTA LA Newcomer.