I may not be a Royalist but I’m devoted to The Crown. Over the years it’s featured some of my favourite small screen moments – for example, the wonderful Winston Churchill/Graham Sutherland pond conversation. I’ve relished sitting with Wikipedia open to research smog and the Suez crisis, thus enriching/sparking my hazy knowledge of 20th century history. The costumes are sumptuous, the settings superb, the royal shenanigans electrifying – it’s just my all-round jam, ma’am.

But this latest series is bollocks. I don’t know what’s happened, but I guess the point of this blog is to play around with a few theories or maybe just slag it off. Let’s be blunt: with every incarnation, the Queen is getting worse. Claire Foy was amazing, but despite adoring her generally, I wasn’t so keen on Olivia Coleman, feeling she brought a too-nice jolly-hockey-sticks quality to the role which wasn’t quite right. The magnificent Imelda Staunton isn’t nailing it for me either. In many ways, she’s very good, and yet… Perhaps it’s just proximity. Foy played a distant embodiment, one we weren’t as familiar with, whereas emulating Lilibet’s later, more recognisable living-memory years is a taller order. I appreciate that, but it’s all slightly off, like she’s being played by the Madame Tussaud’s version.

However, Queenie is a minor gripe, particularly when she’s balanced by the formidable Elizabeth Debicki playing the Princess of Wales – utterly sensational, uncannily similar without ever being a caricature. I found myself feeling sorry for Diana’s sons all over again, because if they caught an episode, it would surely be unnerving and upsetting to see their mother recreated so eerily. It really is a towering performance (literally – she’s about 8 feet even without heels). Salim Dau, playing Mohamed al-Fayed, is also excellent, though as the series progresses, that episode seems increasingly superfluous. Anyway, the point is there are some great actors doing fine work, so why is it all such tosh?

When every new season is announced, the papers always run frothing opinion pieces on whether it’s true-to-life or not. I’ve always found such debates rather silly – of course, it’s not real, just a carefully researched, then ruthlessly fictionalised piece of semi-historical entertainment. An animated Hello magazine. I know that it’s not real and I don’t care, as long as it feels real. As long as it feels like it could’ve, should’ve, might’ve happened. For example, there’s not a shred of evidence to suggest that potent encounter between Churchill and his portrait painter ever took place, but it felt profound, authentic, moving and true. That’s all I require. And I ain’t getting it in this series.

I’m finding scenes veer between slightly boring and absurd. In episode six, the Queen has a meeting with Lady Romsey, Phillip’s ‘carriage-driving companion’. The nature of their relationship is left slightly ambiguous, but the Queen feels it’s a delicate enough situation to warrant some facetime between her and Penny, to quash any sordid rumours. During this encounter, they discuss the demise of the Russian Imperial Family and why the Windsors didn’t come to their aid. Penny offers her theory, which is that Queen Mary was jealous of Czarina Alexandra, didn’t want a pretty Russian royal muscling in on her territory. Queen Elizabeth tartly puts her straight, explaining that it was more of a political decision.

I have no particular view on why the Windsors didn’t help the Romanovs, but do have a hot take on Phillip’s fancy woman appropriating an awkward meeting with her ‘special’ friend’s wife – the monarch of the realm, no less - to tell her that her grandmother was a jealous cow who condemned an entire family to be butchered. Like, WHY would she do that?? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a stupid, erroneous scene that doesn’t ring true on any level. It’s BOLLOCKS. And there are so many moments like it – The Crown has always gone for heavy-handed allusions, but having the Queen say ‘even the televisions are metaphors in this place’, referring to her dinosaur of a set… Imelda looked embarrassed to utter the line. It’s all so on-the-nose, lacking the nuance of previous seasons, lumbering along like a panting triceratops. As they get nearer and nearer to the present day, the show is becoming more and more obsolete.

But I’m ploughing on, hoping for the sublime in all this ridiculousness. Maybe I’ll get another pond scene. It seems unlikely but you never know. I’m currently reading Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers, which is so completely gripping it’s reminding me of the golden material that the production has at its disposal. The Firm is a gilded nuthouse, a hotbed of intrigue and dubious enterprise, and with countless astonishing storylines to pick and plunder, there’s really no excuse for the dross they’re producing. Make it up better, Morgan.

Anyway, The Palace Papers and The Crown are old news now, with H’s controversial memoir just released. While I’d kill for his sales, I’m not so envious of the criticism, half the country appalled by his audacity and perfidy, not to mention his todger. I’m going to actually read the book before I comment on its content, but it seems to me that with everyone else having a pop, he’s well within his rights to tell his side of the story – and by the sounds of it, he’s given us plenty of bang for our buck. Which is more than you can say for The Crown.

• The Crown, Series 5, Netflix