I’ve seen every episode of Arrested Development. I’ve seen nearly every episode of Seinfeld but am delighted when I catch one that I haven’t seen. I’ve seen every episode of The Office and am very excited about the new season (Pam and Jim are having a baby!)
Other than that, it takes a lot for me to get hooked to a show. I suppose when it comes to TV watching, I’m unpredictable and picky about what I watch. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do it’s usually something along the lines of TLC, OLN, the Discovery Channel or HGTV. I can’t get into those teeny-trashy shows like Laguna Beach, The Hills, The OC, One Tree Hill, The Slut Next Door … whatever. Reality shows like The Bachelor and Big Brother make me long for lost time and brain cells and every crime scene investigation or detective/murder mystery show comes back to haunt me everytime I’m at home alone.
This is why I’m pleasantly surprised to find a new show in my life. I watched a random episode on CBC a few weeks ago and have been trying to catch up online every since, starting at the beginning (while I write this, I’m a few episodes into the second season.)
The Tudors, my friends, is absolutely fantastic.
heads will roll ...
There are many reasons to love The Tudors. It’s entertaining, gorgeously shot and choreographed, the set and costumes are stunning, and everyone from Charles Brandon to Thomas Cromwell is very, very attractive.
And it’s sexy. What better way to get women–from the literary/history buff booknerds who drool over Mr. Darcy, to the teeny bopper adolescents who drool over Edward Cullen–into a tumultuous time in Europe’s history than casting Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the somewhat-tyrannical, womanizing, infamous English king?
Aesthetics aside, the show is written in such a way as to illicit sympathy for even the most despicable characters (namely, Henry VIII himself). There is an ambivalence to each character; there are no “good guys” or “bad guys” the way there would be in a crime scene drama. Everyone is painted equally with the same grey strokes. My view of the Tudor dynasty was previously shaped by my reading of The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory a few years ago: Henry VIII was an arrogant brat who got whatever/whomever he wanted and threw tantrums if he didn’t, and Katherine of Aragon was a devout and eternally good woman who was unfairly cast aside for the manipulative social-climbing of clever slut Anne Boleyn. Watching the show has caused me to rethink these preconceived notions and even, at times, feel sympathy for Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (I was an absolute wreck during the scene of her beheading and for an hour afterwards. Girlfriend didn’t deserve that, even if she did steal Henry away from Queen Katherine. And no, I didn’t spoil the end of season 2 because if you know your history, you’d know that it was coming).
Speaking of history, the fact that I know a bit about the Tudor Dynasty doesn’t make the show any less entertaining. I knew Sir Thomas More (played by the handsome Jeremy Northam) eventually falls from the king’s favour because of his unwavering faith in the Catholic Church and its authority; that Anne Boleyn ceases to hold the king’s affection largely because she cannot produce a male heir; that she is beheaded, etc. However, I still find myself glued to my seat and watching episode after episode on my laptop, getting so into it that at one point, following a particularly scathing rip at the Catholic Church by Thomas Boleyn to Spanish Ambassador Chapuys, I yelled, “Oh snap!” The neighbours upstairs must think I’m nuts.
Of course, there are departures from history, but that is to be expected. If we view history as malleable, as facts on which stories can be built, then the series is doing its job very well. Nothing is ever 100% historically accurate, because then we’d never watch it.
I do have a couple issues, though, which are small, but issues nonetheless.
First of all, there’s a lot of bed-hopping going on. Sometimes, the love scenes are racy enough to make me blush and turn the Mute button on if I’m not home alone. This is nothing out of the ordinary for Showtime, but the pristine CBC? Tsk tsk tsk. You naughty network! … But that’s not my issue. My issue is how these people, in a time before vaccinations and reliable contraceptives and precautionary measure-type things weren’t contracting more sexual diseases, especially Charles Brandon (in Season 1, before he gets married for the second time) and Henry VIII (throughout the entire series). Maybe their wealth and high status gave them access to the best physicians and medicines at that time, but still … this was the 16th century. People weren’t exactly glowing examples of sexual cleanliness back then.
Secondly, the Boleyn sisters (especially Mary) have a reputation for being promiscuous before their respective marriages, when they’re teenagers. Mary is said to have slept with a great many men, including the king of France, while Anne, despite defending her virginity to Henry and a skeptical court, is said to have slept with the married poet, Thomas Wyatt, before her marriage to the king. All while their scheming father encourages them to use their seductive powers to get what they want and rise to the top. Correct me if I’m wrong, but female virginity has historically been of the utmost preeminence and a selling point in the marriage market. Wouldn’t Papa Boleyn have been a little more careful and investing in some foolproof chastity belts if he wanted his daughters to advance as much as he did?
The second issue perhaps rises from a personal bias. Despite the fact that each character is portrayed in the most human way possible, I’m beginning to detect some anti-Protestant sentiments. The religious politics at that time were messy, and Henry VIII is always snidely said to have become a Protestant in order to defend his divorce to Queen Katherine, but no side is any better than the other. In the series, however, the unwavering Catholic characters (namely, Katherine, Thomas More, Bishop Fisher) are portrayed as steadfast saints, martyrs for the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The Protestants (Cromwell, the Boleyns, etc.) are manipulative, sneaky, sadistic, power-hungry and are always suited entirely in black, a detail that did not go unnoticed by me. Research (thanks wikipedia), led me to discover that the series is Irish-produced, which may explain the anti-Protestant undercurrent, depending on if it’s Northern Ireland or the Republic of.
As an irreligious Protestant fascinated by but slightly uneasy about Catholicism, it pains me a little bit to see the early Reformers as such a violent, intolerant people. Then again, as The Tudors will show you (with a slight bias), violence and intolerance were on both sides.
Times New Romantic 