Sets appeal: the distracting beauty of TV backdrops

Never mind the regal and political tussles depicted in The Crown; the real action comes with the closing credits. This is the kind of list of job titles of which many feature films can only dream. In addition to the seven art directors of various ranks, there is an art department co-ordinator, art department assistant, five set decorators, two set decoration runners and a set decoration prop driver. Not to mention a drapes master, drapes master assistant, one florist and two home economists.

You don’t get the stand-ins for Buckingham Palace, Balmoral and all the other stately piles of multiple turrets and crenelations looking as good as they do without armies of behind-camera personnel. Netflix is cagey about how much is spent on the series, but it is rumoured that each episode costs more than £9 million — and every penny is visible in every gorgeous shot.

Yet, whisper it softly, perhaps television today has even become too distractingly beautiful for its own good? Do we truly care what the characters are saying any more, or are we too busy looking over their shoulders at the Instagram-perfect chandeliers, photo frames and flower arrangements? Certainly few exchanges of dialogue in The Crown will stay with me in the same way as that mesmerising, wordless sequence of the pre-marriage Lady Diana roller-skating along the chandelier- and portrait-bedecked corridors of Buckingham Palace.

We are truly in the era of more-is-more when it comes to the decor of hit television series. In many ways, this development has arrived at the right moment: a locked-down nation can watch from the confines of its living room the outside world displayed with glorious attention to detail as never before.

I was mesmerised by the immaculately curated assortment of 1960s curtains, fabrics and wallpaper styles in that other current streaming hit, The Queen’s Gambit, which whizzes around a dizzying array of carefully recreated international hotels.