A Netflix notice reminds viewers, and Judi Dench, that ‘The Crown’ is fictional, not factual.
Last week, the BBC released a statement about its upcoming television and streaming service, which offers live event and movie streaming, including The Crown on the BBC iPlayer. However, this statement is misleading. The BBC is not telling TV watchers that it is not producing a factual television series.
What it is doing is telling them that the historical drama is not entirely fictional, but that, like any work of fiction, it has to have some elements that aren’t fully based on fact. This is because it is a work of fiction. It uses historical figures. There are fictional events. But there is also the fictional Queen Elizabeth, played by Keira Knightley. But she is not being portrayed as completely fictional. The Queen is a “non-fictional character with a very real, but non-real, history.”
The BBC is trying to warn Netflix viewers that The Crown is not factual. But it is not, in fact, a work of fiction. Neither is The Crown a work of non-fiction. It is, in fact, a series of historical dramas, with the last one completed in 2016, according to Dench in an interview with The Mary Sue.
The Crown debuted to critical rave in 2016. Reviews were mostly positive, and Dench was praised for portraying the character of Elizabeth II as a woman of character. However, Dench has often been praised for her roles as Queen Elizabeth II, and her portrayal of her on BBC America’s The Crown was praised by The New York Times.
The Netflix announcement of The Crown did not mention the series’s non-fictional element. Dench, who became the first British actress to win a Golden Globe award for her role in The Queen, spoke about it last month on Good Morning Britain, and said that it was a “wonderful” experience.
Dench was at the Emmy Awards with her The Crown co-stars. After the ceremony, she said: “I think maybe people can say, `Is this just entertainment?’ It’s not.”
The BBC’s announcement did not address this point, either. Instead, it made the very important point that The Crown is a work of historical drama. That, according to the BBC, is a fact. The first series of the series was filmed in the 1920s and early 1930s. It follows the first
