Putin Has a Lean and Hungry Look in Patriots

Peter Morgan is interested in rehumanizing that most dehumanizing of forces: power. Total authority, extreme wealth and privilege — these things turn human beings into symbols, abstract entities even to themselves. There’s a reason that Morgan’s big hit Netflix drama is called The Crown and not The Queen, and it’s not just because Morgan already wrote that movie in 2006. It’s because, as British writers have understood at least all the way back to Shakespeare, the golden round subsumes the person.