The Crown series five is nearly upon us. The tabloids are already stoking pre-outrage by sharing onset pictures of the cast filming scenes of Princess Diana’s fatal Paris car crash – conveniently ignoring their own historic role in creating and perpetuating paparazzi culture, both around Diana and current celebrities of course – and airing the upset of ‘royal insiders,’ at the distress the late Queen would have felt at the depiction of herself and her family in this series. The latter never seems to be concern that their depiction is too generous – even though King Charles is receiving a massive compliment being played by Dominic West  – but the presumption that the writing by pro-monarchy Peter Morgan is going to be too cynically faithful to reality, such as the late Queen’s wish that Princess Diana advocate for a cause ‘more pleasant,’ than AIDS awareness. The stakes are minimally higher this time around in that this is the first series to air after the death of the monarch, with Netflix reporting a rise in viewing figures of the existing episodes after her passing. The outrage brigade are braced for memory desecration, heightened by the fact that the time period covered by this series was notoriously difficult for the royal family. Things were very much not adhering to the ideal of an unchanging royal dynasty; three of the royal children got divorced, most notably Charles and Diana after a long and messy PR war, Windsor castle was severely damaged by fire, and the Queen had to start paying income tax. And it’s goodbye girlboss milk snatcher Margaret Thatcher, hello massive glasses and traffic cones as John Major arrives on the scene.

With all this in mind, I put together some things I hope the new series covers and avoids. Not that it really matters, because I will be watching it in as close to one sitting as I can manage.

More of the Queen Mother

With the focus on Charles and Diana’s early relationship and marriage in series four, other characters necessarily took more of a backseat. One of these was the Queen Mother, played by Marion Bayley, who essentially became a glorified extra in comparison to how central she was in the earlier years of the show. Peter Morgan has had to be economical; Princess Margaret’s children haven’t been mentioned, let alone featured, for many episodes, despite being the same ages as Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. As the Queen Mother ages and the Queen’s links to the past fade, it would be interesting for the show to revisit the characters’ original dynamics, especially given Princess Margaret’s declining health.

Fewer heavy metaphors

The motif of the prize stag, whose eventual death was paralleled with Diana becoming part of the family, was laid on so thick that even Josh O’Connor’s Prince Charles referenced it when discussing his father’s insistence on proposing. The talents of the cast are so extensive that it felt unnecessarily heavy-handed.

A light touch

Sometimes the recreation of historical events is either too key to the plot, or simply too tempting. But occasionally restraint proved to be more powerful; Emma Corrin as Diana in her wedding dress, alone before the ceremony, was all that was needed to acknowledge the ceremony itself and continued the season’s theme of her loneliness amidst the opulence of the wedding and palace. (From a Netflix accountant perspective, recreating it would also have been eye-wateringly expensive – not that financial restraint is something that particularly concerns them. The short shot of Corrin in the gorgeous custom wedding dress that took hours to make wouldn’t have been cheap either, there just wasn’t the cost of hundreds of extras and crew.) Looking ahead to season six, there are already tabloids salivating over the looming depiction of the car crash; a Netflix spokesperson has already had to confirm that the moment of Diana’s death will not be shown. I hope that Peter Morgan errs on the side of caution – even though Netflix has the money to recreate the real-life crash more accurately than any previous TV show or film, an abstract edit reminds the audience that it is the subjective vision of a creative team and that they are watching art rather than reality.