The Crown

Peter Morgan's The Crown launched on Netflix on 4 November 2016 as the streamer's most expensive original to date (the first season alone reportedly cost over $130 million) and ran for six seasons through December 2023, totalling sixty episodes. The series won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 2021, Best TV Drama at the Golden Globes in both 2017 and 2021, and the BAFTA TV Award for Best Drama Series in 2023.

The casting structure of three actresses for the central role, Claire Foy in seasons one and two (winning the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in 2018), Olivia Colman in seasons three and four (also winning the Emmy in 2021), and Imelda Staunton in seasons five and six, was a Morgan production decision intended to fit the actresses to specific decade-spanning periods of the reign. Multiple actresses also rotate as Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby, Helena Bonham Carter, Lesley Manville) and Prince Philip (Matt Smith, Tobias Menzies, Jonathan Pryce). The production hired British history advisors including Robert Lacey across all six seasons.

Morgan had previously dramatised similar material in his stage play The Audience (2013, with Helen Mirren) and his earlier film The Queen (2006, also with Mirren), and the show is in many ways the long-form completion of his ongoing project on the constitutional monarchy. Each season's release prompted significant British and international press discussion of the lines between fact, dramatisation and reputation, particularly around the surviving members of the royal family in later seasons.