The Crown In Crisis

The late Tim Pigott-Smith on his final TV role as King Charles III, a monarch caught up in a constitutional storm that threatens to bring down the royal family.

- Lan MacEwan

Just before Tim Pigott-Smith passed away last month, he was in demand and was at the height of his powers as an actor. Tim, 70, who was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List, had recently appeared in BBC1’s Decline and Fall and was rehearsing for a stage production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

BBC2’s King Charles III was one of the last projects Tim had finished before his death, and serves as a particularly apt tribute to the great man’s career.

Adapted from the play of the same name by Doctor Foster writer Mike Bartlett, the feature-length drama sees Tim reprising his acclaimed stage performance as King Charles III (Prince Charles as we currently know him), who triggers a constitutional crisis after refusing to sign a bill restricting press freedom.

Written in blank verse, it’s the perfect vehicle for an actor with Tim’s classical background. While devices such as the appearance of the ghost of Diana call to mind the Bard’s history plays and tragedies, there is also comic relief as Prince Harry (Richard Goulding, who also plays Harry in The Windsors), who thinks himself ‘a ginger joke’, does a spot of soul-searching in a kebab shop and longs for a commoner’s life of drinking in pubs and going bowling.