Hulu’s ‘Charles & Diana: 1983’ Shows a More Nuanced Look at ‘The Crown’ Season 4

Hulu’s new royal documentary Charles & Diana: 1983 could not have premiered at a more intriguing time. Just last night, Netflix’s The Crown Season 4 swept the Golden Globes and this Sunday, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, will sit down in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. It is a big week for reappraising the early days of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s fractured marriage, and Hulu’s Charles & Diana: 1983 does just that. Combining interviews with experts and a trove of footage from the couple’s 1983 Royal Tour of Australia, it stealthily provides a more nuanced look at the famous marriage. That is, if you can catch it.

Charles & Diana: 1983 not only shows how close to the truth the fictional show The Crown got in Season 4, but it also shows the way British royals are trapped by public perceptions of them. It makes for fascinating viewing, especially in a week where the world is waiting with bated breath to find out what exactly Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex are going to reveal in their two-hour sit-down with Oprah Winfrey.

Charles & Diana: 1983 is a new 48-minute-long documentary digging into Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s seemingly successful six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. At the time, the royal couple’s trip was seen as something of a smash hit. The nations were transfixed by Princess Diana, Prince Charles, and their infant son, Prince William. Diana was so popular that folks went Beatlemania-esque bananas for her. While the weeks of diplomatic speeches, school visits, and glamorous nights on the town might have made Diana an international sensation, we know now it was a sore spot in the marriage. Mismatched from the start, the 1983 Australian tour deepened Charles’s jealousy of Diana’s popularity and exacerbated Diana’s own mental health issues.

The Crown Season 4 dramatized this journey in Episode 6 “Terra Nullius.” In that episode, we see friction from the couple from the start. Diana is somewhat awkward upon her initial arrival in Australia, but she soon finds her strength in relating to people with cute anecdotes and sincere person-to-person interactions. Charles is seen as somewhat flustered by his young wife’s instant icon status. After all, he is meant to be the future King. Moreover, The Crown depicts Charles as being just as needy for love and affection as his bride.

Charles & Diana: 1983 confirms The Crown‘s version of events with help from long-time royal experts Ingrid Seward and Paul Burrell. However, when Seward and Burrell are not talking on behalf of Diana, we get a fascinating collection of contemporary news footage. There’s a detour the royals take to visit the scene of a horrid fire, polo matches gone awry, and a warm Maori welcome. Charles’s jealous isn’t at a boil, but a low simmer. He uses jokes to diffuse tension and seems at times to be in sync with Diana (especially as the trip goes on). This is, of course, something The Crown also asserts, but it’s thrilling to see the real Charles have a dry sense of humor about it all in real time.

Hulu’s new documentary also drops at an ironic crossroads for Princess Diana’s legacy. Yes, the fictional version of Charles and Diana’s early years was just feted at the Golden Globes (with wins for both Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin for their portrayals of the royals). More intriguingly, just last week Prince Harry revealed that he has no problem with the “fictional” Crown. He even shared with James Corden that the series accurately captures the tension between public duty and personal needs. What does he have a problem with? People believing the newspapers’ false versions of events.

Charles & Diana: 1983 hits Hulu at a unique moment when we are rethinking Princess Diana’s story. It’s not that we haven’t long accepted that the young woman’s inner turmoil was inflamed by the public demands of being royal. We’ve known since the night of her death that she was literally killed in a crash caused by dangerously speeding paparazzi. Perhaps what we are reconsidering is the royal institution itself. More importantly, is there a way for the British royal family to break their own cycle of self-destruction.

In previews for this week’s Oprah with Meghan and Harry, we hear the Prince literally saying his “biggest concern was history repeating itself.” Charles & Diana: 1983 gives us an overview of that history. We understand the external pressures afflicting those in the public eye, but how do those worsen the inner mental health battles royals face?

Charles & Diana: 1983 doesn’t answer these bigger questions, but suggests that these quandaries were on Diana’s mind in the months before her death. In a clip from 1997, she opens a speech saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have it on very good authority that the quest for perfection as society demands can leave the individual gasping for breath at every turn.” Now as her own son — a mental health advocate — is due to open up about those pressures, we have to wonder if our culture has learned enough to stop “history repeating itself.”

Watch Charles & Diana: 1983 on Hulu