The Crown, season 2, episode 9 review: Philip's brutal boyhood helps Matt Smith soar to heartbreaking heights
The Crown’s resolve to be more than merely Downton-on-steroids was signalled last year with a gripping penultimate instalment chronicling the dwindling into irrelevance of Winston Churchill. Writer Peter Morgan repeats the trick in the second season, and once again in episode nine, Paterfamilias – a self-contained weepie that, with a little padding, could have been released as a stand-alone feature.
The subject at hand is the unhappy childhood of Charles (Julian Baring), a sensitive boy destined to disappoint alpha-papa Prince Philip. As in the Churchill dispatch, The Queen (Claire Foy) is downgraded to bit player in her own story.
Interwoven with Charles’s lonely sojourn – “imprisonment” is perhaps more accurate – at spartan Gordonstoun boarding school in the north of Scotland are flashbacks to Philip’s own tragic coming of age at the same institution. If Gordonstoun represented hell on earth for Charles – "Colditz with kilts", he notoriously dubbed it – Philip's time at the school, where physical fortitude is as highly cherished as academic success, represents the crucible in which boy becomes man.
The Prince (Matt Smith) wants the same for Charles – a hellish rite of passage out of which he will emerge, scarred but stronger. “This isn’t the real world,” he tells the son as an orderly cuts the Prince’s sardines at the breakfast table. In a terse stand-off with Elizabeth – in agreement with Earl Mountbatten (Greg Wise) that genteel Eton is a far better fit – Philip essentially threatens to walk out on the marriage. It’s Gordonstoun of bust.
From here, The Crown soars to heartbreaking heights, utilising Netflix’s bottomless coffers to stunning effect. Young Philip (Finn Elliott) is introduced conversing in fluent German while a man in Nazi regalia smiles in the background. This is Philip’s brother-in-law, the Grand Duke of Hesse – husband of his beloved sister Cecilie.
It’s 1937 and the itinerant Prince of Greece and Denmark is leaving the Reich for Gordonstoun and its founder Kurt Hahn – a radical educationalist who believes the leaders of tomorrow will be moulded through muddy morning drills and cold showers.
Morgan, who wrote Paterfamilias with Tom Edge (Strike), and director Steve Daldry explore the Nazi backdrop of Philip’s youth with curiosity and sensitivity. They are helped immensely by an affecting performance from Elliott, simmering with a rage that, in the adult Philip, will harden into a brittle machismo.
The death of his sister in an air-crash – her doomed journey a last minute change of plan flowing from Philip’s detention for brawling at Gordonstoun – requires him to rush back to Germany for the funeral. Swastiskas flutter from every window as the cortege passes through the streets. In the background flanks of Nazi officers click heels and mourners give the Hitler salute.
It’s an incredible tableau – the Third Reich brought to life with a verisimilitude transcending the usual jackboot cliche. But the episode shreds the emotions even as it dazzles. How tragic, especially, to see Philip take out on the sweet-tempered Charles the unprocessed rage from his childhood – much of it caused by the mental illness of his mother and rejection by his ghastly, gadabout father (who publicly upbraids Philip for Cecilie’s death).
Philip’s veneer cracks – shatters, actually – following Charles’s teary last place finish in Gordonstoun’s annual cross country race. Afterwards Philip clambers into a cockpit to fly the Prince home – a “treat” for his son.
When the plane hits turbulence and Charles understandably panics, his father loses his temper. Charles scurries into the embrace the royal retinue, who show him more love than does his own flesh and blood. Smith’s expression contains multitudes – bafflement, regret, self-pity.
The Crown cast and characters
A stand out in the first series, the actor is even better second time around at showing the chinks of vulnerability in Philip’s clubbable exterior.
Back at the palace, the returning heir is observed from a window by the Queen. While Philip dashes off to play tag with Princess Anne, it falls to a nanny to welcome Charles. Elizabeth watches silently, impassivity and suppressed feeling doing battle across her face.
Yet she does not to go to Charles, who we later see alone in his room – a crushing conclusion to an episode that has pulled at the heartstrings with virtuosic incessancy. It is true that, beyond confirming Elizabeth’s emotional internal exile, Paterfamilias does little to advance the overall arc of the season. As self-contained tear-jerker, though, it is devastating.
