Let's Rush To Judgment: 'The Crown,' Season 2

A new trailer offers a first taste of the second season of The Crown — coming to Netflix this December. And that taste is ... so veddy, veddy tasteful.

As one might imagine.

The first season was all about Elizabeth's first steps into the role of monarch, as she learned to navigate turbid political waters both public and private.

For a time, the only thing she could count on, as the horizon pinwheeled around her, the single sticking-place to which she could screw her courage, had everything to do with the perfect, posh, plumminess of her accent. It seemed to put steel in her spine — and in her jaw.

Again and again, Claire Foy's expressive eyes showed us the many emotions that buffeted young Liz about, but those emotions never managed to make it down to the set of her iron jaw. Words passed through that jaw, but only barely, their ends bitten neatly off, their passion dutifully strangled.

The Crown isn't the sort of show to employ anything so gauche and déclassé as a catchphrase, of course. But if anything could be said to have come close in that first season, it would be the way Elizabeth expresses her polite gratitude to those around her.

The world of rigid etiquette that surrounds her is fueled by the routine exchange of such tiny pleasantries; family, servants, prime ministers, even the occasional member of the hoi polloi routinely find themselves on the receiving end of an Elizabethan "thank you," dry and quiet as a politely muted cough.

The accent is what makes it, though. Because it's not so much a "Thank you." Not really.

It's more a "THEHNkyew."

The new trailer, which follows the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, dutifully supplies more of everything that came layered into the first season like a berry trifle:

0:12 — Liz clenching that magnificent jaw — this time at the ballet!

0:17 — Liz being advised, by a man, yet again, to turn a blind eye to Prince Philip's wandering one!

0:29 — Liz picking out a gown!

0:35 — Liz expressing disappointment in the men in her life! Again, some more!

(0:37 — Matthew Goode, lookin' goode.)

0:40 - 1:03 — The show working hard to convince us that petty squabbles between pampered elites who never have to worry about anything more immediate than the correct dispensation of their pudding-spoons could possibly constitute gripping drama!

1:05 — A Pale Man in a Natty Jumper Offering Passive-Aggressive Support While Standing Stiffly, at a Distance, with his Hands in his Pockets! (This should be a Netflix category.)

1:09 — The money shot! The crux around which season two will surely revolve! The new not-catchphrase! The "THEHNkew" of 2017!

Elizabeth says ... "If only."

But it's not so much an "If only." Not really.

It's more an "eefOHENlay," in fact.

And I am here for it.

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