Tuesday 1 November 2022 08:19 PM The cruellest Crown laid bare: Full details of Netflix show's new series are ... trends now

It has previously been described as 'trolling on a Hollywood scale'.

And Buckingham Palace is likely to find little comfort in the fifth series of controversial royal drama The Crown when it finally airs on Netflix on November 9.

In fact it is even more cruel and offensive than previous speculation has suggested.

The series features graphic reconstructions of the most private of conversations in lavicious detail, imagined conversations between Prince William and his late mother, and Princess Diana's infamous interview with Martin Bashir spread over two episodes.

Only last year the then Duke of Cambridge made a rare and deeply emotional public statement asking that the Bashir interview - which was obtained by rampant deception feeding off his mother's instability and paranoia - should never be seen in public again. Sources have since made clear that this applies to using it for dramatic purposes too.

The Daily Mail can today reveal in detail just how far the makers of the series - and writer Peter Morgan - have gone in chasing viewers for the streaming giant, which has lost 1.2 million subscribers this year and seen its share price drop.

The depiction of senior royals, particularly the then-Prince of Wales, is so relentlessly negative - and the dramatic licence used to recreate relatively recent events in their lives so great - that some scenes verge on the defamatory, with predictions of a backlash against the once entertaining historical drama.

Royal insiders also point out that The Crown will air almost two months to the day after Queen Elizabeth died, and at a time when her family are still grieving, making the invention of events and conversations, as well as the twisting of facts, even more distasteful. 

The 'hatchet job' on Charles

Featuring salaciously-detailed conversations between the then-Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles as well as fictitious family infighting over the future of the monarchy, the latest series of The Crown is - until its final minutes - a hatchet job on the new King.

In one episode Charles is seen holding court at an invented private dinner party with a group of friends and acolytes complaining about his 'predicament'.

He says: 'And how does one describe being Prince of Wales? It's hardly a job, still less a vocation.

'What am I? I'm just a useless ornament stuck in a waiting room gathering dust. There I go again - always a little whine with my cheese.'

He leaves the table to call Mrs Parker Bowles who, given that it is Christmas 1989, is at home with her own family.

The prince chats awkwardly with her husband, Andrew, until she picks up the phone in the bedroom and the pair begin to speak, unaware that their highly intimate conversation is being illicitly recorded by, supposedly, an amateur radio ham.

The eavesdropper goes on, as the programme details, to sell the tape to The Daily Mirror. It was eventually published by The People newspaper, along with the audio recordings, in 1993.

The programme makers are not content to spare the new king and queen consort with the merest reference to the incident, however.

They insist on returning to what was cruelly dubbed 'Tampongate' multiple times in the episode - in excruciating word-for-word detail.

Footage shows a succession of figures - Princess Anne, Prince Phillip, a tearful Diana (still wearing her wedding and engagement rings), prime minister John Major, Camilla with husband Andrew and the Queen - all reading the newspaper excerpts with Charles and Camilla's voices humiliatingly echoing out as a perverse soundtrack.

Although Diana is shown by the programme makers looking 'crushed' by the experience, her former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe, said in 2017 that she actually revelled in her husband's embarrassment as she attempted to build a new life, declaring it 'Game, set and match'.

The actor playing Philip is also shown to be furious and demands a family meeting in which he tells his son how ashamed he is of him - an entirely dramatic invention.

Charles is also depicted throughout the ten-episode series as a divisive figure within the family, repeatedly being dismissive and negative about a committee known as 'The Way Ahead' group formed by senior family members and advisors to formulate future plans in the wake of one of the most damaging periods in royal history.

He is also seen being derogative about his mother to prime minister Tony Blair in order to curry favour with him in another dramatic invention.

The series recreates Charles' notorious television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994, designed to show him as progressive and enlightened future monarch, but which was dominated by his confession of adultery.

Camilla is shown watching it on television with her husband, Andrew, before he storms out of the room.

She is later - erroneously - shown moving out of the family home while the press heckle outside as Andrew stands glaring at the window.

The prince is also depicted as an uncaring father and tells Diana to stop 'smothering' William when he starts school at Eton, saying: 'You don't have to make such a fuss of him.'

Philip and Penny

The relationship between the late Duke of Edinburgh and his close friend, aristocrat Penny Knatchbull, is at the centre of one significant plot.

It even depicts Prince Philip asking the Queen if she can publicly embrace the elegant blonde wife of his godson, Norton, to show that all is well between the two women.

Subsequent meetings are, however, depicted as being frosty, with the Queen privately in tears.

While it is true that Penny, now Countess Mountbatten of Burma, was so much a part of Philip's life that staff nicknamed her 'And Also' - because his guest lists always ended with 'and also Penny' - the two women were actually extremely fond of each other.

Indeed, when Philip was involved in a serious accident in 2019, the Queen dispatched Penny to Norfolk to encourage him to surrender his driver's licence.

She was one of just 30 mourners invited to attend the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral, was given front row seat at Philip's long-awaited memorial service - and also attended the Queen's own funeral in September.

Other scenes show Philip and Penny visiting the grave of her late daughter, Leonora, who died of cancer at the age of just five.

Philip was a great source of comfort to the family at such a difficult time and they are understood to be greatly distressed about the inclusion of her death in an programme purely for entertainment.

Bashir interview recreated

Last year Prince William gave a rare on-camera statement blaming Martin Bashir's 1995 BBC Panorama interview with his mother for fuelling her 'fear, paranoia and isolation' and worsening his parents' relationship.

He expressed his 'indescribable sadness' at the BBC's failings in allowing it to be obtained by fraudulent means, which he says 'contributed significantly' to his mother's state of mind in her final year.

He concluded: 'It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again' and urged any media organisation looking to re-visit it to think again.

Netflix, by contrast, have put the entire shameful event at the heart of not one but two episodes.

It shows Bashir convincing his BBC bosses to let him 'throw his hat in the ring' and chase an interview with Diana, as well as forging bank documents to convince both the princess and her brother, Earl Spencer, that their staff were being paid by the media and security services for information on them.

Bashir, after meeting Diana personally and feeding her paranoia with tales of how the Establishment is out to get her, is shown swaggering back to the BBC telling his bosses: 'I tell you, she's desperate to talk, desperate.

'She opens her mouth and hand grenades come out. She wants to tear down the temple. I think she's got a thing for me.'

Later, in a particularly dramatic scene, Diana can be seen driving her Audi convertible when the brakes fail.

The scene is a reference to her tragic belief at the time that members of the Royal Family were out to kill her - something that fed into her decision to speak to Bashir - which will clearly prove distressing to her family.

Footage depicting the run up to the interview flicks to William at Eton, going about his day unprepared for what us about to be unleashed.

Scenes also show him with his grandmother, the Queen, at Windsor Castle and looking mortified when his mother rings to ask for a meeting with the Queen to inform her of what she has done - another flight of fantasy by the programme-makers.

Diana later tells her mother-in-law: 'I felt the need to clear a few things up about my marriage... about the fact I've so often been shut out and left to cope on my own and that I've suffered from a lack of sympathy and feeling and compassion.'

The Queen replies uncaringly: 'Oh honestly, it's a like a broken record... Haven't we heard all this before a thousand times?'

She even goes on to tell her daughter-in-law - in a meeting that never actually happened, according to

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