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The Tudors

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII
  • Posted at 2:41pm
  • 11 October 2007
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 7 comments

Do you remember that episode of Extras, where a lascivious Patrick Stewart outlined his idea for a film to Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais)? Its premise was straightforward – women’s clothes would simply fall off, anytime, anywhere.

I’m irresistibly drawn to this memory when I watch The Tudors (Fridays, BBC2), a roisterous new series made for the anything-goes Showtime network in the US. (Showtime is the parent of Five’s new import, the excellent, mucky and blackly funny Californication on Thursdays.)

The Tudors isn’t The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The lead actor isn’t padded and wheezing. Oh no, here the young Henry VIII is a rambunctious, gallivanting, priapic bundle of testosterone played by tiny, pouting, Irish sex moppet Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who resists no opportunity to cast off his clothes and leap onto the nearest woman.

(No wonder Henry is standing with his legs so far apart in that iconic Holbein portrait. Judging by the bedroom action in The Tudors, it obviously wasn’t from spending too long on a horse, if you know what I mean…)

This Henry’s court is the Playboy Mansion and Henry is Hugh Hefner. In the first episode, Henry just had to look at one of the many comely pneumatic blondes twittering around his throne and the clothes melted from her body like a saucy Dali painting before she was flat on her back, panting with such delight you might think she’d been presented with a whole box of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges.

How the ladies queue up every week for his majesty’s pleasure. One minute they are simpering behind pillars in Hampton Court, the next they are being ridden with passion and gusto as Henry/Myers once more rips off his vest to reveal a torso so tight you could use it as a trampoline. As, indeed, some of Henry’s conquests appear to do. Naughty!

Still, such vigorous activity must come as a welcome respite from all of the dancing, gorging and recorder-playing that goes on in The Tudors. Goodness, life must have been dull – endless flipping Greensleeves and eating chicken with your fingers.

The Tudors is packed with intrigue, too. Everybody whispers in darkened corridors while casting swivel-eyed glances. Either they are looking for eavesdroppers or they need the toilet. Possibly the former.

And no-one whispers quite like Sam Neill, who is required by international television law to play gravely important English men in US mini-series. Here he’s Cardinal Wolsey, a role that requires him to do little except look shifty in a big red hat. It’s all tremendous fun, though - the kind of glossy, shamelessly tarty, overheated nonsense that American TV does so well.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times.

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Comments

  • Posted on 21 August 2009
  • at 7:37pm
  • by Jo

Oh please, some people here really need to get a grip. First and foremost this is entertainment, not a documentary. As a screenwriter myself and a lover of history, I understand how you musn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. I have loved reading history books since childhood but have no problem whatsoever with The Tudors take on history. Some people really do need to lighten up.

  • Posted on 11 December 2007
  • at 1:00pm
  • by TheLoneRanger

;-) I thoroughly enjoyed watching the tudors on BBC, but after ten episodes of watching Henry trying to get his marriage to Catherine 'trashed', I was hugely disappointed when it ended with Henry and Anne having a romp in the woods and the main issue of the marriage not being sorted out. I was almost as frustrated as Henry! Looking forward to series two, more beheadings, burnings and loads of lust!

  • Posted on 04 December 2007
  • at 6:08pm
  • by nicllwyn

'The Tudors' - so where was Henry VII, then? And what will they make of the very-religious-but-not-very-much-fun (and definitely no sex) Edward VI and Mary?

  • Posted on 04 December 2007
  • at 4:22pm
  • by suem2001

I have been watching these programmes rather in the way people can't help themselves watching when they see a road accident: am deeply embarrassed afterwards, but am also fascinated by the mess made - in this case, that a supposedly respected organisation like the BBC seems to think it is ok to make a joke of its country's history. But of course - all that matters is that this rubbish is peddled to the poor Yanks. Oh, and that a repulsive amount of money is made by such jokers. Please:- GCSE/A-Level students out there, do your own research. This really IS just a soap opera series; I just wish the title reflected that.

  • Posted on 02 December 2007
  • at 11:32am
  • by nicllwyn

I watch the series with a mounting sense of incredulity. 'If allowances are made for historical inacuracies' ... well, that's much of the programme gone. Why are so many men going around hatless? A severe breach of etiquette. Henry was 42 when he finally married Boleyn - and yet here he seems not to have aged since he ascended the throne. (Perhaps it's really The Picture of Henry Gray ...) And as a church historian, I am kept entranced by what is hauled out the dressing-up box for the various ecclesisastics - all very pretty, but thoroughly inaccurate. (I have spotted a 19th century chasuble one week, and a 1960s one another.) Violet brocade cassocks for bishops ... I must recommend them to various friends.

Yes, I know it's all jazzed up for a mass Amercian audience (though from my experience of Americans, I think the writer underestimates their general intelligence). But there are those who will take this as the true version, simply 'because it's on the telly'. I begin to wonder at what point my students will start quoting it in essays ...

  • Posted on 16 November 2007
  • at 6:36pm
  • by troubadour

Alison Graham can be oh! so clever and funny but The Tudors is a brilliant rendering of Henry's court in his young days, or so it seems to me from reading History at Cambridge. He was a ruthless, spoiled, lusty, young King. He was all-powerful and ruthless. His court was full of intrigue. The series is full of historically accurate detail. The production values are sumptuous. What a pity Alison Graham doesn't know what she's talking about.

  • Posted on 14 October 2007
  • at 8:53pm
  • by hazraawal

I think the series is almost as good as 'Rome' on BBC which I watched every week and the repeats too!

However If allownces are made for historical inacuracies, The Tudors is but rivetting staff, regardless of what Alison Graham might say. In it the absolute power of the monarchs of the days is truly and frighteningly realistic and come alive as I watch. As a drama it is magnificent and impressive and "can't wait till next week" type - well almost.

Hazra Awal, Cambridge, Uk

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