Other Doctor Lives: The Crown: Season 1, Episode 9 – “Assassins” (2016)

This is an unusual episode in that Elizabeth takes a little more of a back seat to other political goings-on, although, in context, I understand the storytelling reasons for doing so. Still, while the story that’s shared here is definitely interesting, I do miss having more focus on Elizabeth’s story.

As Churchill’s 80^th birthday nears, Parliament commissions a portrait as a gift for him, and the prime minister, an amateur painter himself, attempts to dictate the image being painted of him. Along the way, he’s forced to reckon with his place in the world as he grows older. Meanwhile, Phillip is jealous of Elizabeth’s relationship with an old family friend, who once hoped to marry Elizabeth himself.

There’s plenty of interesting stuff in the Churchill storyline. I like the exploration of the indignities of aging and seeing Churchill, who’s all about both projecting and exerting control, being unable to change that. The painter is played by Stephen Dillane, a.k.a. Stannis from Game of Thrones, and he brings a nice presence to the episode as an artist who’s trying to uncover the prime minister through this portrait, as well as through examining Churchill’s own paintings.

That said, despite being interesting, I’m not super-invested in this story. Given how Churchill has been positioned throughout this series – his treatment of Elizabeth, his abdication of responsibility to the people at an absolutely-crucial moment, and his focus on preserving his own power above all else – I’m not particularly rooting for him as a character, and so I don’t really feel for him as much in his struggles. And as I’ve said before with Phillip, Churchill’s negative qualities also aren’t compelling enough to draw me in in a love-to-hate kind of way (like with David – what a splendid bastard he is.) As such, while I get what the story is going for, it doesn’t entirely land with me.

Elizabeth’s plot doesn’t, either. In addition to revolving around spousal jealousy about a male-female friendship, which is a serious annoyance of mine anyway, it also relies on the irritating device of spending lots of time on this intimate, long-standing friendship that we’ve not heard about before today. Now, maybe greater knowledge about the British royals would have primed me on who this guy, known as Porchey, is, but since he’s not in The King’s Speech or The Queen, this is the first I’d heard of a guy that Elizabeth will call late at night to discuss horses (Porchey races and breeds them,) a guy who’s given a direct line to the crown because “he’s family.” If we’re going to pin so much narrative importance on this guy and Phillip getting all snippy because he thinks Elizabeth is too close to him, it would’ve been nice to see some groundwork laid for it in earlier episodes.

And just generally, I don’t like storylines about people getting insecure over their spouse’s friendship with a member of the opposite sex. I’ll admit that the time period makes Phillip’s issues more understandable from a social-convention perspective, but that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable for me to watch. The good note here is that it seems to bring Elizabeth and Phillip to a bit of a reckoning. However, I’ve thought that before and we keep ending up in the same old places, so I’m not prepared to put too much stock in it yet.