This was for me was a solid 10 star until they made the huge mistake of recasting instead of aging the actors. They had a perfect 10 show going, you dont mess with that unless you are just plain nuts.What were they thinking? They didnt even recast so the actors had any physical or acting .similarities. Blue eyes even became brown, tall and shapely to short and fat!! HBC is totally miscast and so opposite of how Vanessa portrayed Princess Margaret it is cringe worthy. Sorry Helena, you are great in so many roles but this part is so wrong for you and you are too unlike Vanessa to pull it off. Olivia portrays a decent Queen and would have been fine in a different series but she differs in look and character from Claire that you just cant believe it is supposed to be the same person. As far as Gillian goes, while some say she did great, others and myself disagree. I have one word for her portrayal of Thatcher, OVER~ACTED! So badly in fact, you ask yourself how could anyone have any admiration for the iron lady and not just find her to be one big conceited, arrogant pain the but you wish would just be quiet and go away already. But besides all this I love the series, just not HBC and GA performances in this, they alone gravely dropped the ratings. Thankfully, the series itself is so good you still are glued to the screen, even if you cringe now n then when the bad casting has a moment of how obviously the miscast is.
