I just unsubscribed from Netflix — because we weren't watching it — but now....

This is the story of President James Garfield and his greatest admirer Charles Guiteau, the man who would come to kill him.

Michael Shannon, Matthew Macfadyen, Nick Offerman, Betty Gilpin, Bradley Whitford and Shea Whigham star in Death By Lightning. Premiering November 6. pic.twitter.com/OGWlgbziaM

— Netflix (@netflix) October 9, 2025

It's titled "Death by Lightning," but it's based on a book titled "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" (commission earned). I've read that. By Candice Millard. Great! Nice to see Matthew Macfadyen — Tom Wambsgans from "Succession" — as the ridiculous, awful Charles Guiteau.

I'll turn Netflix back on for that. I originally subscribed to Netflix for one show — "The Crown." That's all it takes to rope me into a subscription. And I would not have unsubscribed if they hadn't dropped "Loudermilk."

"Audiences fell in love with The Crown because its early seasons evoked a lost time and explored a single question."

"At only 25 years old, a woman born before the invention of television—a woman born into a dying empire, who never went to school, who grew up in a castle during wartime—became the ruler of a fractious kingdom, in a world that was just about to invent miniskirts, pop music, and the concept of the teenager. Would she, and the monarchy, survive? But as The Crown’s scope has drawn closer to the present, it has lost the useful distance of history as well as its grandeur, and its sense of permission...."

Writes Helen Lewis, in "The Crown Has Nothing Left to Say/The final season has swans, ghosts, and King Tony Blair, but it doesn’t have a message" (The Atlantic).

Phrase in the article that I thought no one would use anymore: "makes an honest woman of." (Context: "Prince Charles finally makes an honest woman of Camilla Parker Bowles.")

Is anyone watching the new season of "The Crown"?

I was excited about the premiere of the new season on November 16th, and I started to watch episode 1.

I got about 15 minutes into it and impulsively switched over to the Criterion Channel, where I browsed the "Pre-Code Divas" collection, picked one almost at random, and watched it straight through to the end.

I tried watching the rest of that "Crown" episode the next day and only got through about another 15 minutes before giving up. Turned the TV off entirely.

Why is it so unwatchable? I'm not even up to the really bad thing that I've seen spoiled in various reviews. And by "really bad thing," I don't mean that Diana dies in a car crash. That can't be spoiled, and the show puts that first, before the opening credits, so at least you're spared wondering how they will depict that. (They show the car entering the tunnel, and you hear a crash.)

No, what I saw spoiled is this, so don't go there if you're avoiding spoilers. I'll just say I hate that device, but I hadn't got there yet. Should I force myself to watch to the end of the series because I've come so far?

"It’s not that I dislike the royals themselves; I don’t know them personally and really don’t think about them much."

"But I do think about race, class, power, and postcolonial inequalities quite a bit, and so I harbor an unwavering contempt for an institution that stood at the pinnacle of empire and places inherited privilege at the very heart of the British establishment. There is also, if I’m honest, a lack of understanding on my part. I have never fully comprehended the monarchy’s popular appeal. Why would hundreds of thousands of people queue for hours and miles for a glimpse of the coffin of a leader they never elected, or get excited about the wedding of two wealthy people they are never going to meet? But while I loathe the monarchy, I love the Netflix series The Crown...."

Writes Gary Younge in "Heavy Is the Head/The British Royals in the age of streaming" (The Nation).

"[T]hat the book contains only four songs performed by women... is both grim and astounding...."

Writes Amanda Petrusich in"A Response to Bob Dylan’s 'Philosophy of Modern Song' There was something missing from the bard’s recent book" (The New Yorker).

Is it? Grim and astounding? Is it astounding because you'd think, in this day and age, that any informed writer would know you have to gender-balance your lists of favored works of art? That Bob Dylan didn't is a little astounding, but why is it grim? I think it's kind of encouraging that Bob didn't think he had to do that, and it can be a little grim to see other people's lists and suspect that's what they did.

In the book, Bob talks about women a lot, because the songs written about men tend to be about women — from the man's point of view. Why shouldn't Bob take the man's point of view? You want him appropriating what women think? He does that in his songs — "She's got everything she needs..." — but he's being the man who's imagining — maybe wrongly — what the woman is thinking.

Petrusich writes:

Did Prince Charles really breakdance?

If you're watching Season 5 of "The Crown," you may have scoffed in derision when they showed Prince Charles breakdancing, but "This actually happened, and what’s more there’s video to prove it":

"'Monarchy is God’s sacred mission to grace and dignify the Earth,' Queen Mary says sternly. 'To give ordinary people an ideal to strive toward.'"

"Elizabeth, inscrutable even in her younger years, gives her a long look. If it was wishful thinking in Season 1, it is a joke by Season 5. The new season, which premieres Wednesday, finds the royal family in 1991, in the thick of one of the ugliest periods of its recent history.... Conveniently for the real-life king... the show’s depiction of the dissolution of his marriage to Diana presents a challenge to the version of events that has calcified into the American collective memory over the past three decades. Season 4 reinforced that version: Diana’s struggles with depression and self-harming behaviors were portrayed as outgrowths of the royal family’s chilly demeanor and tacit approval of her husband’s infidelity. But Season 5 presents a reversal. Charles? Less evil than you think, it seems to say. Diana? Kind of a little twerp, now and again.... [B]y the time she quips her famous 'I’d like to be queen of people’s hearts' line to Bashir, it feels almost duplicitous."

From "‘The Crown,’ good as ever, may change your opinion of Charles and Diana/Season 5 of the Netflix drama finds the royals spiraling into chaos but tells compelling stories about almost all of them" by Ashley Fetters Maloy (WaPo).

By the way, I love the name Ashley Fetters Maloy. I've been noticing names that form sentences since I encountered the surname Peed — 40 years ago.

"No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged."

"Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a ‘fictionalized drama,’ the program makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.... Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series—that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence—this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent."

Said Judi Dench, quoted in "Dame Judi Dench Accuses The Crown of 'Crude Sensationalism'/The friend of Queen Consort Camilla and frequent royal portrayer says the Netflix series 'cannot go unchallenged'" (Vanity Fair).

Dame Judi Dench.

She has played the role of Elizabeth I once and Victoria twice — in movies that contained any amount of fictionalization — and she is personal friends with Queen Camilla — whose implication in the demise of Diana will come up in the new season of "The Crown."

Here are Judi and Camilla delighting themselves with the favorite dessert of oppressors and villains the world over:

 

Art — unlike ice cream — is not about making people comfortable.

All these complaints about "The Crown" are only reminding me that the new season is about to begin. Having recently watched every episode of "How to with John Wilson" and "Joe Pera Talks with You" twice (almost), I am ready to get back to this old favorite show.

"King Charles... is shown lobbying Prime Minister John Major in a bizarre attempt to force his mother’s abdication."

"It also depicts Charles bitterly arguing with Diana as their divorce looms, and romancing Camilla, now Queen Consort, including a dramatisation of the notorious ‘tampongate’ phone call. A production source said that media outrage over inaccuracies – and the lack of sensitivity in airing the series so close to the death of the Queen – is ‘spooking’ the broadcaster..... An entire plotline is, to this end, devoted to suggesting that [Prince Philip] pursued a scandalous extra-marital affair with Penelope Knatchbull, the Countess Mountbatten of Burma... Needless to say, there’s no credible evidence that such an exchange took place, or that Philip was anything other than a devoted husband to Her Majesty. Suggesting otherwise, so soon after both of their deaths, is at best distasteful and at worst downright cruel. Then there are episodes which appear to lend credibility to the barmy conspiracy theory that Princess Diana was murdered.... [Peter Morgan, the show's creator, has said] that Queen Elizabeth II was ‘of limited intelligence'... [and]  the Royal Family ‘survival organisms, like a mutating virus,’ [and] the Queen’s belief in Christianity was ‘deranged’ and the monarchy itself is ‘insane.’"

From "Netflix bosses 'are spooked by backlash over The Crown'/Show's creator Peter Morgan is 'increasingly uncomfortable' as producers are slammed over 'malicious' storylines in new series covering royal family's turbulent 1990s" (Daily Mail).

Judging from that article and the comments over there, I'd say people in Britain are disgusted by the prospect of a new season of "The Crown." Here in America, though, we love it. We understand fictionalization, and too bad if the people depicted are still alive. If they're rich enough, powerful enough, or evil enough, we're fine with using them in whatever interesting stories filmmakers want to spin out. 

We've seen movies about Dick Cheney and Mark Zuckerberg, for example. We watch these things and maybe discuss the truth/fiction ratio on the side if that's also entertaining. And quite aside from the art of film, the news itself is also something with a variable truth/fiction ratio. We've oriented ourselves to that mystery of human communication.

Freedom of speech breathes a murky atmosphere.

"'Spencer' is, in many ways, baloney, abundantly spiced with slander. It is contemptuous of those whom it accuses..."

"... of treating Diana with contempt. Although [her confidante] Maggie says to her, 'Don’t see conspiracy everywhere,' the film sees nothing but. I can’t decide what made me laugh louder: the dead pheasant, stiffly positioned on the road at the entrance to Sandringham, like a prop from a Monty Python sketch, or the Prince of Wales informing his wife that 'you have to be able to make your body do things you hate.' He sounds like a Pilates instructor.... For all its follies, I would rather watch it again than sit through further episodes of 'The Crown.' The sight of that show clawing toward the credible, without ever quite getting there, is painful to behold, whereas [Spencer's director Pablo] Larraín is somehow freed by the liberties that he takes with historical facts.... [H]e tunes in to Diana’s high anxiety; the camera is constantly on her, with her, and around her, as if drunk on her perception of the world...."

Writes Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, reviewing the new movie "Spencer," about Princess Diana, played by Kristen Stewart. Here's a trailer for the movie.

"This is a lie to history, it's a lie about history, of the Sex Pistols' history, and so I am always going to find that as an issue you cannot compromise on."

"If you allow this to happen you are allowing people to alter and rewrite your history, thus making your real history a lie by the contradiction supporting that and accepting money for that, that's something I could never be a party to. I cannot compromise in selling my integrity. I know what's what and far too often it's the examples in the press and the media of history being rewritten that causes real damage to the truth.... The show's original offer was, well, it was a misuse of us completely."

Said John Lydon — Johnny Rotten — quoted in "The Crown wanted to show punks throwing bottles at The Queen on jubilee but I refused to let them use Sex Pistols' 'God Save The Queen', claims Johnny Rotten in court battle/Paul Cook & Steve Jones suing punk group's lead singer..." (The Daily Mail).

The primary word of wisdom uttered in the Bezos-in-space extravaganza: "Woohoo."

The land-based announcers: "Wow!"

ADDED: Oh, what am I saying? Do I think that going into space ought to produce intellectual insight? I'd be like Prince Philip — as depicted in "The Crown" — meeting the astronauts:

 

Why would they say anything but "woohoo"? "Woohoo" is the insight to be acquired, and you know that before you go and whether you go or not, just as you know "wow" is the word for those watching from a stationary position.

"There came a moment, around the time I turned 70...."

 

"The situation this country is facing is anything but amusing"/"Oh, who cares? Honestly. One of the few joys of being as old as we both are is it is not our problem."

I just happened to reach Episode 5 of Season 3 of "The Crown" last night, the eve of my own 70th birthday. The episode title is "The Coup."

"The recently released fourth season of 'The Crown'... has been criticized for not laying out that much of the drama is fictionalized..."

"... causing online trolls to attack the Duchess of Cornwall, so much so that Clarence House has restricted Twitter comments. Seemingly in response to commentary over the new season, Netflix promoted their documentary 'Diana: In Her Own Words" which uses the recordings she made for Andrew Morton’s tell-all biography," says ET Canada, pointing at this devastating 3-minute clip:

The documentary DIANA: IN HER OWN WORDS answers much of what you’re asking pic.twitter.com/85gFfVir7h

— NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) December 1, 2020

The Times of London wrote about the documentary a couple weeks ago: 

"If there were a TV show that portrayed your family as a clueless bunch of snobs and philanderers who helped drive a mentally fragile young princess to despair, would you watch it?"

My answer is hell, yes. The question is posed in the first paragraph of a NYT article with a headline that also asks a question — "Royal Watchers Wonder: Do the Royals Watch ‘The Crown’?" 

So I assume the TV show in question is an extremely high-quality production with great writing and acting and cinematography that doesn't purport to tell a strictly accurate story but to dramatize everything for artistic purposes.

I'd love to watch. They're already using me and "I" am being consumed by the general public. That's going on anyway. On the other hand, I kind of stopped reading the question after "snobs." I think it would be great fun to watch a show that amped up the cluelessness and snobbery of me and everyone I cared most about. 

The linked article only has a few clues about whether the royals watch "The Crown" which I'll put below the fold. I think the question whether they would watch — that is, whether you'd watch, if it were you — is more interesting. 

"Behind the frustration with 'The Crown' is a recognition that, right or wrong, its version of the royal family is likely to serve as the go-to narrative for a generation of viewers..."

"... particularly young ones, who do not remember the 1980s, let alone the more distant events covered in earlier seasons. 'They’ll watch it and think this is the way it was,' said Dickie Arbiter, who served as a press secretary to the queen from 1988 to 2000. He took issue with parts of the plot, including a scene in which aides to Charles question Diana about whether she is mentally stable enough to travel alone to New York City. 'I was actually at that meeting,' Mr. Arbiter said. 'No courtier would ever say that in a million years.' The biggest problem, said Penny Junor, who has written biographies of Charles, Diana and Mrs. Thatcher, is that 'The Crown'... poses a particular threat to Charles, who arguably comes off worst in the series.... 'It is wonderful television.... It is beautifully acted — the mannerisms are perfect. But it is fiction, and it is very destructive.'"

From "‘The Crown’ Stokes an Uproar Over Fact vs. Entertainment Dramatic liberties in the latest season of the Netflix series, covering the turbulent 1980s, are annoying Britons who wrote of that period, even among those who disparage the royals" (NYT). 

I'd avoided "The Crown," but in the last 2 weeks, I've watched the first 7 episodes of Season 4. After seeing the first 3 episodes, I subscribed to Netflix, something I'd been avoiding for years. I'm now a Netflix person, and I find it quite mesmerizing. I'll finally be able to cancel the cable service — which is so much more expensive and which I wasn't watching at all.

Anyway... historical fiction. What do you expect? You've got to criticize the inaccuracies but also realize that this is the way it's done. It's a much bigger problem that journalism is inaccurate and unprofessional. But it's completely professional for television and movie dramas to twist characters and events to make things exciting and interesting. How else can you do it?

I liked Junor's statement — "the mannerisms are perfect. But it is fiction, and it is very destructive." The "perfect" mannerisms — how can the be "perfect" and yet fictional? — belong especially to the Charles character. Are they "destructive" because they are true or "destructive" because they are false?

"Prince Charles’s Most Punchable Moments in Season 4 of The Crown, Ranked."

"We’re merely here to marvel at the sheer punchability actor Josh O’Connor manages to convey as the fictional Prince of Wales on Peter Morgan’s work of fiction, The Crown" (Vulture). 

I've started watching "The Crown"... beginning with Season 4. The awfulness of Prince Charles is quite something. Anyway... this ranking is well done and conveys some of what's so amusing about this series.