New Delhi

Season 5 of 'The Crown' is still weeks away from premiere, and yet it is already being censured for being "unkind" and "exploitative" by people like the former British prime minister John Major. Now, Dame Judi Dench herself has chimed in, responding to reports that the royal drama's fifth time around will imply that Prince Charles, who is now King, attempted to supplant his mother Queen Elizabeth II from the throne. In a letter to The Times of London, she said she is concerned that 'The Crown' will present an "inaccurate" and "hurtful" account of history. She added that the closer the show approaches our times, the more it "seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism."

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Also Read: 'The Crown' creator and cast respond to allegations of being 'exploitative'; 'I have enormous sympathy...'

The forthcoming fifth season of the show, which will be the first since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, will explore the 1990s, which were some of the most contentious years of the late Queen Elizabeth II's monarchy, including the divorce between Prince (now King) Charles and Princess Diana, and the latter's death. The concerns against the show arose when the UK conservative publication The Daily Telegraph ran an article titled 'The Crown’s decision to show ‘all-out’ war between Charles and Diana raises concerns at Palace' recently in which a friend of the King said the series is "exploitative".

Dench added, "While many will recognise The Crown for the brilliant but fictionalised account of events that it is, I fear that a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true. Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series — that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence — this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent."

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'The Crown' has faced criticism from the beginning in regard to its alleged inaccuracy and unfair portrayal of the royals. Dench insisted that there is no one a greater believer in artistic freedom than her "but this cannot go unchallenged. Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a “fictionalised drama” the programme makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.

"The time has come for Netflix to reconsider — for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years, and to preserve its reputation in the eyes of its British subscribers," concluded Dench.

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'The Crown', a lavish production with stratospheric production values, has won acclaim for its set design, scripts, performances, and so on. While it centres around the life and monarchy of the Queen, it also explores the life of the Windsors in general, their struggles in the modern world, the increasing irrelevance of monarchy, and so on.

Queen Elizabeth II died on the evening of September 8 at Balmoral Castle. Earlier that day, the doctors had expressed concerns over her health and were keeping her under medical supervision. Her reign lasted for 70 years. She passed away as the longest-serving monarch in Britain's history.