The royal treatment

From stage to screen, regal dramas are now everywhere - with scant regard for accuracy. As The Crown returns, Mark Lawson asks if this is the TV show's legacy

IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END for The Crown, much praised for its A-list acting and circa $277,000-per-minute production values, but widely criticised for its screenwriter Peter Morgan inventing dialogue for the royal family in actual and imagined situations. Netflix has now released the first four parts of the sixth and final series, with the last six to follow next month. This run begins with the death in Paris of Diana, Princess of Wales - though with actress Elizabeth Debicki reappearing as the princess's ghost, which suggests that Morgan and the producers (Left Bank Pictures) have not been cowed by rows over taste.

But as it ends, it's increasingly clear what The Crown started: a seismic shift in royal representation on stage and screen. Take two new plays just opened in London: Backstairs Billy, by Marcelo dos Santos, imagines the relationship between the queen mother and her closest servant, Billy Tallon; while Jonathan Maitland's The Interview explores the 1995 Panorama interview Diana gave to Martin Bashir.

Both shows overlap with The Crown: The Interview closely parallels its season five episodes which dealt with negotiations between Diana and Bashir; Penelope Wilton is playing the queen mother in Backstairs Billy, a play that is on newer ground, Tallon being one of the few royal characters not animated by Morgan.

It's hard to imagine, though, that either play could exist without the example of The Crown. Nor that two films about Prince Andrew's disastrous Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis would currently be in production: Netflix's Scoop and Amazon Prime's A Very Royal Scandal with, respectively, Rufus Sewell and Michael Sheen as the prince, and Gillian Anderson and Ruth Wilson as the interviewer.