A right royal cheese-fest on Netflix

The latest season of The Crown manages to turn one of the most tragic love stories into a cheese-fest that would make a fondue party look like high art. The portrayal of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed in this series is so cringe-worthy, it’s like watching a poorly scripted soap opera unfold in slow motion.

Let’s start with Emma Corrin’s portrayal of Princess Diana. It’s less acting and more a dramatic reenactment of a high school play. The doe-eyed, perpetually pouty expression might have worked for a ’90s teen magazine photoshoot, but for capturing the complexity of Lady Di? Not so much. Corrin’s Diana is a walking cliché, complete with a soundtrack of melancholic violins every time she enters the frame, as if we needed a musical cue to remind us that we’re supposed to feel something.

And then there’s the romantic subplot with Dodi Fayed. It’s so over-the-top that it’s almost comical. The candlelit dinners, the moonlit walks, and the romantic yacht ride – it’s like a checklist of every cheesy romantic trope thrown into a blender. Their love story is less Shakespearean tragedy and more like a bad made-for-TV movie, complete with cringe-worthy dialogue that could make even the most ardent romantics roll their eyes.

Speaking of Dodi Fayed, the portrayal of this real-life figure is reduced to nothing more than a cardboard cutout of a playboy. There’s little depth, nuance, or exploration of the real person behind the headlines. Instead, we get a caricature that feels more like a plot device than a genuine character. It’s a disservice to the memory of a real individual, turning him into a two-dimensional prop for the show’s melodramatic ambitions.

The series seems to revel in the sensationalized aspects of Princess Diana’s life, reducing her to a caricature of tragic glamour rather than delving into the complexities of her struggles and triumphs. It’s as if the writers took a highlight reel of tabloid headlines and stitched them together with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

In conclusion, this season of The Crown takes a real-life, heartbreaking story and turns it into a melodramatic soap opera with all the finesse of a daytime TV serial. The cheesy portrayals do a disservice to the real people behind the characters, turning their lives into a spectacle for the sake of ratings. If you’re looking for nuanced storytelling and respectful portrayals, you might want to change the channel on this one.