Diving Into The Crown
Photo: Netflix
Season 5 will be the first installment of The Crown to premiere after the death of the show’s subject, Queen Elizabeth II, on September 8, 2022. The tragedy has had a silver lining for Netflix: views for The Crown skyrocketed in the months following the late English monarch’s passing. That might surprise those who are privy to the controversy that has surrounded the series among the queen’s subjects in the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth’s death only intensified a yearslong campaign in the UK to get Netflix to add disclaimers to the show, clarifying to viewers that the content of each episode is merely inspired by real events and not 100% historically accurate. That controversy may explain why, despite the increase in views, Ranker voters’ opinion of The Crown actually declined in the month following Queen Elizabeth’s death.
The graph above displays how many votes indicating a favorable opinion (the blue bars) and how many votes indicating a negative opinion (the red bars) were recorded for The Crown on Ranker every month, with the yellow trend line indicating the percentage of each month’s votes that were positive.
Photo: Netflix
Though this dip in sentiment was modest (an impressive 60% of votes cast for The Crown on lists across Ranker throughout September 2022 indicated positive sentiment) and resolved itself in October, it may repeat itself following the release of Season 5. The fifth season will cover the death of Princess Diana, a depiction that is fated to inspire more debate. Following months of criticism, including a sharply worded open letter from Dame Judy Dench, Netflix finally announced in October that disclaimers would be added to Season 5. But with the queen’s passing in recent memory, it might be too little, too late. Should Netflix be worried about a reaction against the show?
Ranker Insights data finds that controversy may actually be a boon to public opinion of The Crown, at least among Ranker’s predominantly American audience. Sentiment for The Crown was at its absolute highest in the months immediately before and after the release of Season 4.
The Crown’s loyalty to the facts wasn’t a subject of much spirited debate until the fourth season, which depicted controversial events like the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana and the ascension of Margaret Thatcher to the office of prime minister. Critics claimed the season was not only inaccurate, but “anti-monarchy.” Despite this outcry, sentiment for the show reached all-time highs around the time of its release. It first peaked in September 2020, two months before the release of Season 4 on November 15, then again in the month following the Season 4 release. These peaks were due in large part to surges in upvotes for The Crown on The Best Current Period Piece TV Shows Airing Now and The Best Historical Drama TV Shows. Up until this point, the highest The Crown’s sentiment rating reached was 75% in January 2017, a few months after the series’ debut.
Given the sharp rise in views of the show reported by Netflix, the streamer likely isn’t worried about a flop for the coming fifth season. Still, it ought to give Netflix some comfort that the all-but-certain debate over The Crown’s latest installment will likely cause not just views, but also positive sentiment, for the show to increase rather than decrease.
Who’s Watching The Crown?
Although the death of Queen Elizabeth does cast a shadow over the series, it also may prompt some TV fans who’ve never seen The Crown to finally check it out. To that end, we’ve looked into some shows outside of Netflix’s catalog (and therefore, outside the streamer’s marketing analytics, as well) with fans who are statistically more likely to love The Crown.
BIODRAMAS OF BRITISH MONARCHS
It’s not surprising that fans of The Crown love other dramatized biographies of British monarchs — though maybe it’s helpful to know they’re not just in it for the painstakingly designed costumes and sets. Those who love The Crown are 8X more likely than the average TV viewer to also love ITV’s Victoria, a series covering the life and times of England’s previous female sovereign. The Crown fans are also 7X more likely to love The Tudors, which deals with the reign of Henry VIII, and 3X more likely to love Elizabeth I. This interest in monarchs extends beyond the UK, though: The Crown fans are also 3X more likely to love The Great, a series about Russia’s Empress Catherine II.
These viewers love The Crown and… Victoria, The Tudors, Elizabeth I
FEMME-FRONTED PERIOD PIECES
The shows beloved by The Crown fans aren’t all about kings, queens, and palace intrigue — though they’re very often led by female heroes in a time distant from our own. As Netflix has likely already learned, subjects of The Crown are 7X more likely to also love the streamer’s smash-hit miniseries The Queen’s Gambit — though the “queen” of that title has no relation to the hero of The Crown. What Netflix may not know is that the show’s fans are also 6X more likely to watch Amazon’s dramedy about a female stand-up comic in the 1950s and 60s, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Finally, The Crown fans are 6X more likely to love the BBC’s long-running midcentury period piece Call the Midwife.
These viewers love The Crown and… The Queen’s Gambit, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Call the Midwife
SPY SHOWS
Most surprisingly, those who love the reserved drama of palace intrigue that defines The Crown also have a taste for the similarly subtle, but infinitely more violent genre of spy thrillers. Netflix likely hasn’t thought to consider appealing to the fans of what are arguably the three most influential spy series of the last decade, none of which are licensed by the streamer, in promoting the latest season of its successful biodrama. Ranker Insights tells us that The Crown fans are 6X more likely to also love Showtime’s Homeland and 5X more likely to love the BBC’s Killing Eve and FX’s The Americans, all of which currently stream on Netflix rival Hulu.
These viewers love Supernatural and… Homeland, Killing Eve, and The Americans
The Crown’s fifth season premieres November 9 on Netflix.
