The Crown creator Peter Morgan wants to tell more stories about the British royal family

Netflix’s royal drama The Crown has always attracted its share of reactions. Some were glowing (the costumes, the performances, the production values) while others were less than (the writing in the later seasons, the painfully dull Kate and William plotlines).

But one of the most strident and also the most befuddling responses were accusations The Crown was anti-monarchy, that it was, in the words of one of its most high-profile critics Judi Dench, “cruel” and “crude”.

Dench, a long-time good friend of Camilla, took issue with what she perceived as the series’ sensationalism and blurring of reality with dramatisation. Dench and similar detractors including members of the British parliament, demanded Netflix throw up a disclaimer at the start of each episode.

Sure, the show exaggerated, speculated and fictionalised aspects of the royals’ lives. As far as anyone knows, Charles never plotted to have his mother abdicate the throne. And Elizabeth, Charles and Mohammed Al-Fayed’s guilty consciences never manifested as the not-literal-ghosts of Diana and Dodi.

What The Crown’s most ardent royalist critics never grasped was the show was pro-monarchy propaganda. Yes, it was also, when it was good, incredibly well-made and compulsive drama. But it was definitely, hand-on-heart, a love letter to the Windsors.

Premiering in 2016, The Crown was, at the time, one of the most expensive TV series ever made with a $US100 million budget for its first two seasons. Its story started with the 1947 wedding between Elizabeth and Philip and wrapped up with the 2005 betrothal of Charles and Camilla.

The man behind the series, Peter Morgan, crafted a show that humanised the distant and unrelatable British royals. He gave their onscreen avatars vulnerabilities, foibles and pain. When the characters behaved badly, it was because they were people and not empty, unfeeling symbols.

That Morgan did that while still venerating an, arguably, anachronistic institution is what made The Crown a clear ally of the British royal family – whether they accept it or not.

In an interview overnight with The Hollywood Reporter, Morgan said he had heard the royals both love and hate the show. “I’ve decided that until one of the members of the royal family tells me directly, in person, I won’t believe anything that I hear,” he added.

The Crown may have wrapped up after its eventual six seasons, but Morgan isn’t yet done with the Windsors.

“I don’t think I’m done with the subject,” he said. “I might find some way of coming into it from a different way. If you go back in time, you always have that wonderful opportunity for metaphor. You can find a story in the past and tell that, and it (will) actually be a story about the present, but in camouflage.

“And that, I think, might be a more elegant way forward. To move forward from where I left the show off at the moment feels too soon.”

That Morgan wants to write more stories to do with the royals won’t come as a surprise to anyone who is familiar with the screenwriter and playwright’s career.

The Crown was an adaptation of his stage play, The Audience, which told the story of Queen Elizabeth’s weekly meetings with British Prime Ministers throughout her reign.

That production reunited Morgan with Helen Mirren, who previously played Elizabeth in Morgan’s 2006 movie The Queen, for which Mirren won an Oscar.

Given Morgan has already done three high-profile projects on the Windsors, he’s not about to stop. He is still in the hunt for that knighthood.