In the third season of Netflix’s “The Crown,” Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman ) meets with the British prime minister, Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins) , after a mining disaster in Aberfan, Wales, that killed more than a hundred schoolchildren. Wilson urges her to visit the grieving town. She insists that her presence would create a paralyzing distraction and impede rescue efforts. Besides, she asks, “What precisely would you have me do?”

“Comfort people,” he says.

“Put on a show?” It is as if he had asked her to don sequins and ride a unicycle, juggling, down a tightrope. “The Crown doesn’t do that.”

Ah, but the Crown does now, in 1966, or at least it is expected to. And when it refuses, people notice. This should not surprise Elizabeth: “Smoke and Mirrors,” a standout episode of Season 1, was about the epochal decision to put her coronation on television, which both magnified the event and made it smaller.

And “The Crown” — the scintillating Netflix drama, improving with age — is not at all shy about putting on a show, doling out all the pageantry and suds necessary. Season 3, arriving Sunday, delivers 10 entertaining episodes of personal history that are equal parts political, poignant and juicy.