From gin palaces to royal palaces, The Crown is the most lavish soap ever made: JAN MOIR’s view from the sofa

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What first attracted Princess Diana to the multi-millionaire Dodi Fayed? That is one of the many questions that remain unasked and unanswered in the new series of The Crown, released today.

We all have assumptions, we all have theories, we all have The Crown to suggest – as they do here – that Dodi was a weakling demi-dolt, controlled by his puppet-master father, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw).

It is wily, socially ambitious Mohamed who arranges the fateful yacht holiday that is the beginning of the end for poor Diana.

It is Mohamed who urges Dodi to dump his inconvenient American fiancee; and it is Mohamed who is helpfully dead and cannot sue The Crown for depicting him as a scabrous fixer who crows that he has put Diana ‘on a plate’ for Dodi and urges his son to ‘seal the deal’.

Really? Ugh. In other cringe scenes from that crucial holiday in the summer of 1997, Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) writes love poems and has his words engraved on to a silver plaque, which he presents to an unimpressed Diana (Elizabeth Debicki).

What first attracted Princess Diana to the multi-millionaire Dodi Fayed? That is one of the many questions that remain unasked and unanswered in the new series of The Crown, released today

In other cringe scenes from that crucial holiday in the summer of 1997, Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) writes love poems and has his words engraved on to a silver plaque, which he presents to an unimpressed Diana (Elizabeth Debicki)

Is this truly what happened in the days preceding the terrible events in the Alma tunnel? No one knows for sure, which is the eternal problem of and for The Crown 

‘Slightly mad. Completely over the top,’ she tells a friend over the phone.

Dodi even fails to read the room when Diana, shimmering and lithe in a swimsuit, talks earnestly about her landmine campaign and the injuries sustained by many victims.

‘At least you still have your legs. Losing them would be a crime against humanity,’ says Dodi, running a saucy hand up her thigh. It is certainly a crime against scriptwriting, although we are on surer ground when Dodi proposes marriage and Diana refuses.

READ MORE: Fresh anguish for William and Harry as The Crown portrays Princess Diana as distressed on her final day before she died 

‘I can’t make your father love you more by becoming your wife,’ she says.

Yet off they go to Paris anyway, where the dread hand of history awaits.

Is that truly what happened in the days preceding the terrible events in the Alma tunnel? No one knows for sure, which is the eternal problem of and for The Crown; a drama made for entertainment purposes which barges into recent events and dabbles in the souls of both the dearly departed and the very much still alive without a qualm.

Yes, the Royal Family are among the most closely observed people on the planet, but when The Crown can go no further than skin deep, when the flesh beneath is unavailable for examination, they just dig in and make it all up, not caring who they might wound.

To this day, no one knows for sure if Dodi really did ask Diana to marry him, but his proposal is presented here as fact, without even a fig leaf of dramatic speculation.

Prince Harry, who is on the Netflix payroll for other projects, seems to be relaxed about a show which depicts him as a glassy-eyed 12-year-old whose lifelong trauma over his mother’s untimely death is now being streamed into millions of homes.

Earlier this year, Harry claimed he had watched The Crown and ‘fact-checked’ it himself. He said he didn’t mind any intrusion because viewers understand it is fiction.

I wish I had his confidence in the popcorn-munching proles who will gobble this down as if every word and scene were real.

Yet the narrative thrust of this sixth and last series of The Crown is so powerful, the acting so delicious and the entire production so magnificent in every way that cavilling over who said what to whom on the Al-Fayed yacht or at Balmoral Castle is perhaps to miss the point.

Prince Harry, who is on the Netflix payroll for other projects, seems to be relaxed about a show which depicts him as a glassy-eyed 12-year-old (left) whose lifelong trauma over his mother’s untimely death is now being streamed into millions of homes

I wish I had his confidence in the popcorn-munching proles who will gobble this down as if every word and scene were real

From gin palace to royal palace, The Crown is the most lavish soap ever made, a big budget psychodrama, stuffed with more premier league British actors than a Harry Potter film. Resistance to its charms is futile

From gin palace to royal palace, The Crown is the most lavish soap ever made, a big budget psychodrama, stuffed with more premier league British actors than a Harry Potter film. Resistance to its charms is futile.

Yes, the incessant intrusion into the Royal Family’s most intimate moments and the imagined conversations invented for dramatic purpose could be viewed as tasteless in the extreme, but to its credit The Crown at least handles the Paris car crash and the events that follow it with a great deal of sensitivity.

As the clock inexorably ticks down towards the great unbearable, Debicki’s Diana – a luminous portrait of a woman in her prime – moves through Paris in scenes that are compellingly familiar; slipping in and out of the Ritz in her white jeans, Dodi’s hand on the small of her back; that unmistakable cap of blonde hair glimpsed through the window of a speeding car.

It is utterly haunting.

Elsewhere, however, do I detect a tinge of sadism in the way the Royal Family are portrayed? There is certainly no let up here, with Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) still an unfeeling old brute and Princess Anne (Claudia Harrison) seen shovelling mashed pheasant into her royal gob before concluding that all morose Prince William (Rufus Kampa) needs is to do is go out and shoot a stag, which is certainly one way to buck up.

Yes, the incessant intrusion into the Royal Family’s most intimate moments and the imagined conversations invented for dramatic purpose could be viewed as tasteless in the extreme, but to its credit The Crown at least handles the Paris car crash and the events that follow it with a great deal of sensitivity

The ongoing caricature of the Queen (Imelda Staunton) as an unfeeling mother who cannot cry seems not only one-dimensional, but cruel and unfair

Lesley Manville does a lovely turn as Princess Margaret, perma-smoking in navy sequins as she glowers at Camilla (Olivia Williams), who is depicted as little more than a thick hooray who giggles about going ‘a**e over t*t’ in front of photographers.

All very amusing, but the ongoing caricature of the Queen (Imelda Staunton) as an unfeeling mother who cannot cry seems not only one-dimensional, but cruel and unfair.

Only Prince Charles (Dominic West, excellent) is given a sensitive hinterland; after Diana’s death we see him capsized with remorse and infused with a sudden emotional intelligence hitherto unnoticed in the great cufflink-fiddler.

‘Love, Mummy? Love?’ he bellows at one point, as the Queen ignores him and fusses over a corgi instead.

Only the ghost of Diana – not as mawkish as it sounds – has his measure. In an oddly moving scene, Charles expresses his regret to her for, well, everything.

‘That will pass,’ she says to him. ‘No, it won’t’ he replies.

Well, we all know who was right about that.

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