SPOILER ALERT: This review contains details of the fifth season of The Crown, which debuts all 10 episodes November 9 on Netflix.

“Don’t want to break any rules,” exclaims Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II about halfway through the fifth and penultimate season of The Crown. The latest incarnation of the now-deceased monarch in Peter Morgan’s Netflix drama uttered that, but when it comes to the rules, the latest run of The Crown has knocked down almost all the gilded guardrails this time around.

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A result that tilts unsteadily between the gelastic and the grubby.

For one thing, launching on November 9 on the streamer and veering close to the events of Morgan’s 2006 film The Queen, this season of The Crown comes just two months after the real-life Elizabeth died September 8 at 96 after more than 70 years on the throne. Too soon in one sense, the series is also too late in another. Debuting just days after now-King Charles III hosted a climate-change meeting Friday at Buckingham Place, the 1990s-set fifth season of The Crown is closer than ever…