The third season of The Crown is shaping up to be something truly special. Not only do we have the debut of a new cast, including the tantalizing proposition of Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth, Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Anne and Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher, but we now have confirmation that we’ll see Irish actor David Wilmot taking the role of Arthur Scargill.
For those of you unfamiliar with 1970s and 1980s British trade union disputes, Arthur Scargill was President of the National Union of Mineworkers during some of the most tumultuous years for British Industry, which the next two seasons of The Crown will cover. With the third outing encompassing the late 60s to about 1980, we’ll see Scargill leading a mineworkers strike which resulted in the country resorting to a three-day work week in an attempt to conserve energy.
Scargill eventually triumphed over Prime Minister Edward Heath (who’s as yet uncast), resulting in the downfall of his government. Throughout all this, Margaret Thatcher was watching in the wings and got her revenge a decade later, when she crushed the 1980s miner’s strike and essentially killed off heavy industry in Britain (which will undoubtedly be the focus of the fourth season).
With the show staying close to the Royal Family and the aristocracy, it’ll be interesting to see how it portrays a working class, socialist hero who’s in complete opposition to the luxury and privilege represented by the main characters. While I like the soap operatics of who’s snapping at whom, it’s the dramatized history that keeps me coming back to The Crown, so fingers crossed this will be good stuff.
In any case, we should get trailer for the new run soonish, or at minimum, some more official photos of Colman and the rest of the cast in costume. After all, The Crown season 3 is expected to be here in late 2019, so it shouldn’t be too long now before Netflix begins to ramp up the promotion.
