Having had an interest in Henry VIII and his various wives since I was small, I was keen to see The Tudors. The series (half-way through over here) provides food for thought for someone with Tudor interests and I am retrospectively grateful to my A Level in History for its exploration of the power that the king wielded.
Johnathan Rhys-Meyers does well at capturing the complex figure and personality that we know as Henry the Eighth. Far from seeing an obese monster inclined to separate bodies from heads, the viewer glimpses the qualities of a Renaissance king, ie. his diplomatic refusal to be recognised as King of France. Henry was merely eighteen when his reign began so I feel divided over Rhys-Meyers' portrayal. Kings could easily become tyrants then and something the actor captures perfectly is the feeling that Henry's mood could change from good to bad (or vice versa) in an instant. On the other hand the youthful element has its drawbacks. Wrestling with King Francis at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, he seems not so much vain as a hot-headed teenager trying to look macho. (Incidentally, the Field of the Cloth of Gold was well-dramatised, just the sort of Tudor extravagance and showing-off I imagined, and Henry - wanting physical comparisons with Francis - certainly gets his chance to be vain.)
An excellent example of the fine balance between favour and cruelty present in Rhys-Meyers' Henry is the treatment of his children. He recognises his illegitimate son with Bessie Blount by making the child Duke of Richmond, thus parting him heart-wrenchingly from his mother. When Queen Catherine suggests that he favours this child over their daughter Mary, Henry craftily gives Mary the same kind of independent establishment, so dividing two mothers from their beloved children. He is equally calculating when, after Catherine asks him to come to her at night, he does exactly that at a time when he knows she is at prayer, enabling him to blame her.
I note that the scriptwriters have adhered to that old film cliché about how no woman can give birth on screen (referring here to Bessie Blount) without screaming frantically, and in case we weren't sure what was going on, her waters are shown breaking. But then, her "newborn" baby is enormous.
I have a keen interest in historic costumes and am a little disappointed by the wardrobe department. Lady Blount's shoulderless dress seems anachronistic - in a time when showing too much hair was unseemly, shoulder skin seems unusual (the same impression that Catherine of Aragon's uncovered hair, while a short-sleeved dress worn by Anne Boleyn in the fourth episode looks completely wrong.) I hate to sound pedantic or picky, but there are plenty of surviving Tudor portraits - the costume designers must have studied one or two of them. For this reason, I also criticise that common mistake - the assumption that Catherine of Aragon had dark hair because she was Spanish. I was impressed, however, that she looked older than Henry without looking too old.
The editing is a little choppy in places. In the first episode, I think fifteen minutes passed where Catherine was not seen, so it was puzzling when the possibility of divorce was introduced. The dialogue balances fairly well between modern English and what we think of as "Tudor" English, although the use of "fashionably late" jarred.
The beginning warrants a little basic criticism. In spite of the dating early in the first episode, my first impression of Rhys-Meyers was a mental question over which Tudor he portrayed. Henry the Eighth had reddish hair; portraits of his father Henry the Seventh show a man with longer, brown hair so the image Rhys-Meyers presented didn't suit the look of either, although he acts the part of Henry the Eighth very well.
So I find a summary difficult. Intriguing aspects of history are eliminated - the fact that Henry VII spent 24 years on the throne cementing his position by increasing his powers and lessening those of the nobles (this could have been used to show why Henry VIII was so powerful - he needed to be to ward off usurpers, prior to Henry VII's accession had been thirty years of civil war) while more average events (ie. the marriage of Princess Margaret to the King of Portugal which never actually happened) are spiced up unnecessarily. The writers appear to have misunderstood which events were truly dramatic and which were not. We have recorded the series in our house, which is handy because my mum keeps pausing it for me to explain who the characters are, how they are related and what they did - surely the series is meant to do this, not the viewer?
I had hoped the title of this series indicated that they were going to look at the story of all of the Tudors. Henry VIII may be the most famous but that doesn't make the others boring or unimportant. Had Henry VII not passed the laws that he did, Henry VIII could not have been the potential tyrant that he was.
Johnathan Rhys-Meyers does well at capturing the complex figure and personality that we know as Henry the Eighth. Far from seeing an obese monster inclined to separate bodies from heads, the viewer glimpses the qualities of a Renaissance king, ie. his diplomatic refusal to be recognised as King of France. Henry was merely eighteen when his reign began so I feel divided over Rhys-Meyers' portrayal. Kings could easily become tyrants then and something the actor captures perfectly is the feeling that Henry's mood could change from good to bad (or vice versa) in an instant. On the other hand the youthful element has its drawbacks. Wrestling with King Francis at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, he seems not so much vain as a hot-headed teenager trying to look macho. (Incidentally, the Field of the Cloth of Gold was well-dramatised, just the sort of Tudor extravagance and showing-off I imagined, and Henry - wanting physical comparisons with Francis - certainly gets his chance to be vain.)
An excellent example of the fine balance between favour and cruelty present in Rhys-Meyers' Henry is the treatment of his children. He recognises his illegitimate son with Bessie Blount by making the child Duke of Richmond, thus parting him heart-wrenchingly from his mother. When Queen Catherine suggests that he favours this child over their daughter Mary, Henry craftily gives Mary the same kind of independent establishment, so dividing two mothers from their beloved children. He is equally calculating when, after Catherine asks him to come to her at night, he does exactly that at a time when he knows she is at prayer, enabling him to blame her.
I note that the scriptwriters have adhered to that old film cliché about how no woman can give birth on screen (referring here to Bessie Blount) without screaming frantically, and in case we weren't sure what was going on, her waters are shown breaking. But then, her "newborn" baby is enormous.
I have a keen interest in historic costumes and am a little disappointed by the wardrobe department. Lady Blount's shoulderless dress seems anachronistic - in a time when showing too much hair was unseemly, shoulder skin seems unusual (the same impression that Catherine of Aragon's uncovered hair, while a short-sleeved dress worn by Anne Boleyn in the fourth episode looks completely wrong.) I hate to sound pedantic or picky, but there are plenty of surviving Tudor portraits - the costume designers must have studied one or two of them. For this reason, I also criticise that common mistake - the assumption that Catherine of Aragon had dark hair because she was Spanish. I was impressed, however, that she looked older than Henry without looking too old.
The editing is a little choppy in places. In the first episode, I think fifteen minutes passed where Catherine was not seen, so it was puzzling when the possibility of divorce was introduced. The dialogue balances fairly well between modern English and what we think of as "Tudor" English, although the use of "fashionably late" jarred.
The beginning warrants a little basic criticism. In spite of the dating early in the first episode, my first impression of Rhys-Meyers was a mental question over which Tudor he portrayed. Henry the Eighth had reddish hair; portraits of his father Henry the Seventh show a man with longer, brown hair so the image Rhys-Meyers presented didn't suit the look of either, although he acts the part of Henry the Eighth very well.
So I find a summary difficult. Intriguing aspects of history are eliminated - the fact that Henry VII spent 24 years on the throne cementing his position by increasing his powers and lessening those of the nobles (this could have been used to show why Henry VIII was so powerful - he needed to be to ward off usurpers, prior to Henry VII's accession had been thirty years of civil war) while more average events (ie. the marriage of Princess Margaret to the King of Portugal which never actually happened) are spiced up unnecessarily. The writers appear to have misunderstood which events were truly dramatic and which were not. We have recorded the series in our house, which is handy because my mum keeps pausing it for me to explain who the characters are, how they are related and what they did - surely the series is meant to do this, not the viewer?
I had hoped the title of this series indicated that they were going to look at the story of all of the Tudors. Henry VIII may be the most famous but that doesn't make the others boring or unimportant. Had Henry VII not passed the laws that he did, Henry VIII could not have been the potential tyrant that he was.