Netflix recently released the fifth season of The Crown on November 9, and so far The Crown’s ranked second among Netflix’s TV Programmes.

The Crown is a television series produced for Netflix by two British and American film and television companies, Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television Inc. The series follows the story of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and has been updated to its fifth season since the first season was updated in 2016, with the storyline updated from the Queen’s succession to the royal marriage of Diana and Prince Charles. The Crown currently has a rating of 8.7 on IMDb and is ranked 108th on IMDb’s Recommended TV Series list, combining its popularity on Netflix with its high IMDb rating, it is a very popular series. The success of this Netflix series can be attributed to the following reasons.

No.1 The public’s curiosity about the story of the royal family.

Although the drama is based on historical events, it is not a historical fact. However, because of the huge amount of money spent and the excellent production, the curiosity of the general audience about the inner life and emotional disputes of the royal family is to some extent satisfied. Also, the release of The Crown has given audiences an insight into the challenges and benefits of being a member of the royal family (Hughes, 2019). In particular, the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September of this year brought a lot more buzz to the TV series. Many viewers have watched The Crown to learn more about the life of the Queen and to remember her (Tassi, 2022).

No.2 The content is controversial.

As mentioned earlier, the content of The Crown is based on a dramatization of historical events, and therefore some of the content does not correspond to reality. As a result, many British critics and members of the royal family have been critical of the content of The Crown. For example, the British broadcaster John Sergeant has argued that The Crown does not represent history correctly and that some of the fictional scenarios have damaged the reputation of the Windsor family (Williams, 2019). On the other hand, Prince Harry, a member of the royal family, said on a talk show that he was satisfied with The Crown’s portrayal of the royal family, although it was inaccurate(Tassi, 2022). The controversy over the series among critics and members of the royal family has led to frequent media reports and exposure in the eyes of viewers.

Figure 1 (Bell, 2022)

All in all, The Crown has been an undeniable success as a Netflix Original series and has brought Netflix a lot of revenue and viewership. The Crown has attracted 1.1 million viewers since the premiere of its fifth season and was Netflix’s top-rated drama in the English language from November 7th to 13th (see Figure 1).

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References

Bell, B.A. (2022) Netflix top 10: ‘the Crown’ Season 5 debuts at no. 1 with more than 107 million hours viewed in first 5 days, Variety. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/the-crown-season-5-no-1-globally-netflix-1235432965/ (Accessed: November 26, 2022).

Hughes, S. (2019) How the Crown has changed the world’s view of the royals, BBC Culture. BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191117-how-the-crown-has-changed-the-worlds-view-of-the-royals (Accessed: November 26, 2022).

Tassi, P. (2022) Queen Elizabeth’s death has ‘the Crown’ surging in popularity on Netflix, Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeths-death-has-the-crown-surging-in-popularity-on-netflix/?sh=1a2479c426a1 (Accessed: November 26, 2022).

Williams, Z. (2019) The Crown: Shameless royal propaganda – or an insult to the monarchy?, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2019/nov/26/the-crown-shameless-royal-propaganda-or-an-insult-to-the-monarchy (Accessed: November 26, 2022).