When the young queen, far away with Philip in Kenya on the royal tour at the idyllic wildlife retreat Treetops, is brought the news that the king has died, Mr. Daldry does not give us her reaction. We see her as her aides would — at a distance, held in Philip’s embrace on the lawn. Nor do we see the grief of the dead king’s wife, suddenly the queen mother. Instead Mr. Daldry shows a household suddenly in motion as the news sweeps through Sandringham — first the shock, then the running, running through the corridors, the queen mother still in her nightdress, everyone running toward the death chamber except the queen’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, who stands in a stricken eddy of silence, her grief double-edged: not only for the loss of her father, the king, but for fear she will also have to say goodbye to his closest aide, the married group captain Peter Townsend, with whom she has fallen hopelessly in love.

It’s fair to say that, so far at least, “The Crown” is not a work of political or social history. It’s family history, and it’s a love story — more precisely, a series of overlapping love stories: between a father and a daughter, between a princess headed for greatness and her dashing prince, between another princess headed for heartbreak and her forbidden swain, and between a royal household and an adoring public. It shows us that public as the royals see it — again distantly, from palace balconies or through the windows of limousines and planes and luxuriously outfitted steam trains rushing through the peaceful beauty of the British countryside. Beyond the manicured gardens and immaculate driveways that surround the royals, and as invisible to us as it was to them, is a postwar Britain of drab, bomb-pockmarked streets and pale, exhausted Londoners clutching their ration books.

If all goes as intended, these two enthralling episodes will be the opening chapters of an epic that promises to occupy viewers into the 2020s. “The Crown” has already been approved for two seasons of 10 episodes each. The plan is for each season to cover a decade in the life of the queen and her realm, with casts that change as the central characters age. My hope is that the show’s canvas will open up and out into the world as Elizabeth’s emerging self-discipline, composure and moral clarity are tested by family and country into the 1960s and beyond, right through what is now the seventh decade of an extraordinary and still vibrant reign.