The Tudors - Season 1-3 [DVD]

There is much to admire about The Tudors. It has taken one of the most dramatic and important periods of English History and brought it alive on the small screen in a serious, but entertaining way. The production is lavish and impressive throughout and so is the timing-28 episodes covering barely 15 years. The acting is of a good standard with Meyers a dominating if far too young looking Henry, Nick Dunning excellent as the calculating Thomas Boleyn and strong performances from James Frain as Cromwell and Jeremy Northam as Thomas More. Clearly Michael Hirst who wrote the series knows his history and much of what we see is accurate, his treatment of the machinations surrounding the King's divorce and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn is effective and exciting, the evocation of ambition and treachery at court convincing. So why oh why with so much going for it does Hirst rewrite history? Why does Cardinal Wolsey have to cut his own throat or Margaret the King's sister have to murder the King of Portugal whom she never married in the first place? Surely the history of this period was close enough to soap opera without having to write it as one? It is such a pity when you feel at certain moments as in the farcical trial and execution of Anne Boleyn that the series achieves real power and pathos. Still The Tudors deserves a strong recommendation because it will fire many (like me)with a new desire to read serious historical works on this period again.

What do you want first the good bits or the bad? Alright let's begin with the good bits:

The Tudors is a superbly entertaining drama. It grips you from beginning to end and is compulsive viewing. It is extraordinarily well produced, well casted, well directed and a well acted drama. The cast have a real feel for their parts and as such it is nothing short of brilliant... as an entertaining drama.

Now the bad bits: Many of the costumes are Elizabethan and not Tudor. Victorian carriages are used in some scenes and it gets worse: Henry VIII's sister Margaret marries the King of Portugal whereas in reality she married the King of Scotland, how could they make such a dire mistake as that? They get their Popes mixed up also and have it that it was Pope Paul III who opposed the move that led to the creation of the church of England. The Pope who refused to let Henry VIII divorce his first wife was actually Paul's predecessor, Clement VII. They demolish, root and branch the character of one of our great early English composers - Thomas Tallis who is portrayed as a wretched, scruffy, languid, insipid character, a creature of dark shadows and a homosexual but there is no evidence to suggest he was any of these things. Their destruction of him is reprehensible. They include a purely fictional so called Anna Buckingham who is obviously based on Anne Stafford, Lady Hastings who was in reality the Duke of Buckingham's sister, however in the series she is portrayed as his daughter and a woman of relaxed moral virtue! There are just so many glaring inaccuracies, they go on and on and on, I can't list them all.

There are lots of bawdy intimate sexual scenes involving Henry VIII and his mistresses engaging in a variety of lascivious acts which appear somewhat over dramatised to say the very least; they include Henry having his trousers unbuttoned by a mistress on her knees and then she gives him...well, I will leave it to your imagination; at that point however, I was beginning to wonder if it might be a 'carry on' film I was watching and I was almost expecting Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams to burst in! Henry VIII is shown all the way through to be a supremely fit, six pack male with boundless sexual energy and never puts on weight when in fact he expanded to around 20 stone and had a 54 inch waistline in his later years as was noted in the Holbein painting. Throughout the series he has no trouble mounting women in the bedroom scenes, but in fact in his later years he couldn't mount his horse without being hoisted up. To sum it all up however, it is all about entertainment and to that end it is just wonderful. It was made essentially for an American audience so it had to contain dazzle, gloss and spin at the expense of historical accuracy. After all we hear that so few people read history these days that not many will notice all the errors anyway. Perhaps in series four they will have old Henry travelling in a chauffeur driven Rolls.

Great Casting: Jonathan Rhys Meyers portrays his Henry VIII part (as scripted for him) superbly well, as does Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, Sam Neill (remember him in 'Dead Calm' with Nicole Kidman) plays a truly engaging and seriously believable two-faced Cardinal Wolsey, Jeremy Northam a great Thomas More and Maria Doyle Kennedy plays a notable Catherine of Aragon.

Other parts to look out for: Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon, James Frain as Thomas Cromwell, Sarah Bolger as Mary Tudor, Nick Dunning as the devious, conspiring Thomas Boleyn, Steven Waddington as Duke of Buckingham, Max Brown as Edward Seymour, Guy Carleton as Chamberlain, Padraic Delaney as George Boleyn, Jamie Thomas King as Thomas Wyatt, John Kavanagh as Cardinal Campeggio, Ruta Gedmintas as Elizabeth Blount, Sonya Macari as Manuela - first lady in waiting and Blathnaid McKeown as Princess Mary.

As an entertaining drama and a romp I give this 5 stars, but for its historical accuracy I rate it just one star. Just enjoy it and don't take any of it too seriously!

Glossy but not history. Lots of sex scenes to appeal to a presumed (accurately as it turned out) need for the learned audience for occasional tittilation.

What's weird is that with such exceptional material-- the REAL history of what went on-- the people who made this series had to resort to sensationalism, or simply made massive mistakes.

For those who say it's all about entertainment-- well, and good. But the popularity of this series means that a helluva lot of people are going to believe that this is a near-accurate depiction. Just check out some of the comments on this website.