I felt like they did have a little nod to The Sex Pistols when Tony was showing the queen the Silver Jubilee stuff he’d designed. One of them was a tea towel with the Union Jack as the background and Liz’s head in the middle. It’s the same design as the “God Save the Queen” single…minus the edits to the queen’s head.
As far as I can tell, no such tea towel was created and the designer of the single cover got his inspiration elsewhere. But when I saw the tea towel in the show I immediately thought of the cover, and in the show, Olivia Coleman seems to react to the tea towel with a gasp.
Anyway, according to The Sun, the writers of The Crown were all set up to include The Sex Pistols in the series and John Lydon turned them down. There was no song approval, and thus no Sex Pistols in The Crown.
Just finished S3, and I enjoyed it overall (I thought the new Queen and Duke of Edinburgh did very well in the roles), but I agree with some of the criticism above. Would *definitely *have wanted to see the Princess Anne kidnap attempt and the Beatles’ visit to Buck House for their MBEs. On the other hand, I didn’t need to see nearly as much of Princess Margaret’s marriage falling apart. The Aberfan episode was powerful. Clancy Brown looks nothing like LBJ but captured his earthiness well.
Lol, I reread this thread to see if someone else made mention of this so-obvious-oversight-it-couldn’t-be-an-oversight.
The one thing… the ONE THING… American Beatles fans know about the Royal Family is this: During their ascendant 1963 the mop tops played before the royals, John Lennon made cracks, and a good time was had by all.
British pop culture dominated the globe in the 60s, but one would not know it from watching this show. While I didn’t expect the royal performance to be recreated, I did expect that the Beatles would get referenced somehow… like you said, a song heard in passing, a reference to Paul, something. One of the issues mentioned in the show is the trade balance, and in the 60s, the Beatles (and rock music in general), were one of the few bright spots in the British export world.
(James Bond was similarly ignored, almost as egregious as the Beatles, tbh.)
Regardless, this is a massive oversight in this show.
I guess buying the television rights to an Irving Berlin song with two characters belting it out was far cheaper than buying the TV rights to merely having ‘Penny Lane’ playing in the distance, being heard by one of the characters through a window.
I’m just catching up with this series now, and am up to Season 3. I agree with this point, even more strongly. Not only the portrayals but the history–I’m somewhat a student of 1960s US politics, and they completely messed up LBJ’s entire approach to the Brits, starting with his “resentment” of them for refusing to go along with his Vietnam policy. As viewers have noted, they weren’t very enthusiastic about the war in Vietnam, but the Harold Wilson administration certainly supported the US in Vietnam for far longer than was conscionable, and he had no quarrel with them in the mid-1960s, much less raised holy hell inveighing against them for opposing him on it.
When someone messes up something I know about, I have to question their command of things I don’t know much about, like the Profumo affair and British politics in general. very disappointing. Also, Clancy Brown and Michael C. Hall are miscast in the parts. They’re pretty bad.