Television, drama and books increasingly draw on the lives of actual people. This has an undeniable power, but great risks, too
There is an obvious answer to the objection that the upcoming series of The Crown contains an event that never happened: it’s a drama. Netflix has duly said so. But of course it’s not that simple. The Crown is strongly acted, full of complex characters and absorbing plots – yet also derives a great deal of its effect from hewing closely to the real lives of the British royal family, and an impression of privileged insight into it.
The cultural landscape is currently littered with similar blurrings, from This England, Michael Winterbottom’s dramatisation of the early days of the Covid crisis, to Impeachment, about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; from Pam and Tommy, about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, to Maxine, about the Soham murders. Historical novels have been joined by autofiction. A play about the Rebekah Vardy/Coleen Rooney court case is on its way.
