The Tudors: Season 4

England, 1540. King Henry VIII has married Catherine Howard and seems to have finally achieved a level of happiness. The execution of Thomas Cromwell has left the government firmly cowed by Henry and the religious Reformation of the country in his hands. However, Catherine's past is colourful and she soon finds old 'friends' creeping out of the woodwork, determined to use her to their own advancement. When Catherine's flighty and irresponsible behaviour irritates and distances Henry, she also finds herself drawn into a dangerous affair.

The fourth and final season of The Tudors picks up with Henry VIII on his fifth and penultimate wife and covers the last seven years of his life. Aside from the controversial life and death of Catherine Howard, this period is most notable for Henry's decision to invade France and besiege Boulogne. These elements are characterised in the TV series as a form of mid-life crisis: all it's lacking is the decision to buy a Harley or an impractical and overpriced open-topped convertible. This is an amusing idea but also one that lends itself to an air of melancholy: as Henry's old leg wound worsens he knows his death is coming and he sets about preparing for it. As old friends and allies also start passing, Henry is forced to consider his life and accomplishments, exemplified in the final episode when he starts having visions of his dead wives and questions whether he was right to divorce or execute them.

As with the previous seasons, The Tudors maintains a certain watchability in spite of its numerous problems and deviations from history. However, the series has definitely suffered from the loss of James Frain as Cromwell. David O'Hara (despite being only four years younger than the actor who played his father in Season 1) steps up as the Earl of Surrey and gives a menacing, charismatic performance but doesn't actually do very much. Henry Cavill rounds off his appearance on the show with a surprisingly effective melancholic performance as Charles Brandon also approaches the end of his life, enlivened only by a new romance. Sarah Bolger (finally promoted to the title sequence cast) is also excellent as Mary Tudor, walking a fine line between being sympathetic but also driven by her religion. For the wives, Tamzin Merchant is effectively flighty and irritating as Catherine Howard should be, but rounds off being a little bit too irritating. Also, the writers ill-advisedly keep the Howard/Culpeper affair storyline going for at least a full episode longer than is really necessary.

Once that's out the way, Joley Richardson gives a much more decent performance as Catherine Parr, Henry's final wife, and portrays Parr as a woman of much greater maturity and intelligence than her predecessor. There's some minor scheming as the reformers in the court find themselves wondering if Parr is religiously acceptable, but that peters out as Henry becomes focused on war instead. The battle scenes are surprisingly good, with the Siege of Boulogne emerging as the stand-out setpiece of the entire series. Afterwards, we're plunged back into minor court politics before the show finally ends.

As with previous seasons, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is really not a great Henry VIII. He nails the king's intelligence but not his charisma, but with the addition of make-up to chronicle Henry's passing years he does seem to improve a little in this final season. At least up until the last two episodes, when he decides to adopt a bizarre and distracting deep voice (presumably under the mistaken impression it helps him sound older) which does not work at all.

That said, the fourth season of The Tudors (***½) does adopt a melancholic and reflect tone in the last few episodes as the king's life draws to a close which ends the series on a surprisingly sombre tone. Whilst The Tudors will never rank among the great historical dramas, it does do enough reasonably well to make it an effective (if far from perfect), basic account of the life of Henry VIII. The series is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).

The Tudors: Season 3

England, 1536. Anne Boleyn has been executed and King Henry VIII has married Jane Seymour. Henry is incredibly happy with his new wife, who soon bears him his much-longed-for son. However, Jane is also keen for Henry to reconcile with his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, and Henry is concerned that Jane is meddling in affairs beyond her interest. Such matters become less important when the north of England rises in rebellion against the crown, furious with the dissolution of the monasteries and what they see as the corruption of the king's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell.

The third season of The Tudors covers the period running from 1536 and the immediate aftermath of the execution of Anne Boleyn, to 1540 and the king taking Catherine Howard as a mistress. In terms of wives, it's the busiest of the four seasons as it has to get through three of them whilst also addressing the popular rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the downfall of Thomas Cromwell, the rise to prominence of the Seymour family (who would retain some power even beyond Henry's death) and the religious opposition of Cardinal Reginald Pole, who stirs up opposition to Henry VIII in Europe. Furthermore, it only has eight episodes to do all this in (as opposed to the ten apiece of the other seasons). They even fit in a somewhat bizarre episode in which Henry has a mini-breakdown and works through it with the help of his fool (a great performance by David Bradley).

The third season is therefore quite impressive in that it manages to pack all of these storylines into a very short space of time and explore them quite thoroughly without feeling rushed. It's a fairly dynamic season, complete with more action-adventure subplots as the would-be assassin Sir Francis Bryan chases Reginald Pole across Europe and as the Pilgrimage of Grace marches across England with Charles Brandon leading an army against them.

The performances range from the excellent to the okay. James Frain's Thomas Cromwell is probably the season highlight as he loses control, but Henry Cavill improves yet more as Brandon is ravaged by guilt over the deaths he causes. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, again, is fairly neutral in his performance, but there's a nice turn from singer Joss Stone as Anne of Cleeves. Giving an unproven actress a tricky role with a German accent was quite a challenge, but she handles it reasonably well. The season also benefits from Sarah Bolger coming more to the fore as Mary Tudor, a difficult character to get right. Mary was a woman of principal and authority, but one who became increasingly ruthless when she herself became queen, and Bolger combines those traits quite well. Unfortunately, the loss of Natalie Dormer's Anne Boleyn is more keenly felt, with Annabelle Wallis's Jane Seymour being rather unmemorable in comparison, despite an odd attempt to draw parallels between her and Diana, Princess of Wales.

The season is also let down a little by the arrival of Catherine Howard at the end of the season. Though Tamzin Merchant (probably better known for almost being Daenerys in Game of Thrones, playing the role in the unaired pilot and later being replaced by Emilia Clarke for reasons that have never been divulged) does a good job with the material, the writing never really explains why Henry would fall for such a flighty creature. That has to wait until Season 4, when the suggestion that Henry is having what we'd now term a mid-life crisis is better-explored.

Season 3 of The Tudors (***½) maintains the show's run of being watchable, entertaining, historically interesting (though not hugely accurate), slightly trashy but lacking in depth. The season is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).

The Tudors: Season 2

England, 1533. King Henry VIII is anxious to formally annul the marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and to wed Anne Boleyn in her stead. However, the Pope remains adamantly opposed to both the union and the king's reforming of the Church in England. As a major schism looms, the king finds himself at odds with some of his most loyal friends and supporters, including Sir Thomas More.

The second season of The Tudors covers what is generally considered to be the most pivotal period in the life of King Henry VIII, extending from his marriage to Anne Boleyn to the latter's fall from grace and execution just three years later. This period includes the separation of the Church of England from Rome, the martyrdom of Thomas More, the birth of the future great Queen of England Elizabeth I, and the rise to prominence of Jane Seymour, who is destined to become Henry's third wife. It's a rich period of history, dramatised many times (but arguably most famously in the play and film A Man For All Seasons, which focuses on More). The Tudors, due to its wider scope, has the ability and freedom to take this story and integrate it into a wider dramatisation of Henry VIII's entire reign, which has positive and negative consequences. Negatively, this is arguably the heart of Henry VIII's story and what comes after cannot help but be anticlimactic in comparison (though the producers of the show certainly give it a go). On the plus side the great time afforded the story by a television series means that the show can do some very interesting things, like devoting the entire final episode of the season to the hours leading up to Anne's execution, a move which succeeds splendidly and gives us what may be the best episode of the series.

A noticeable gap in the cast is that of Sam Neill, whose character of Cardinal Wolsey died at the end of the first season. The less-well-known James Frain has to step up as his effective replacement, the ruthless reformer Thomas Cromwell, and does an excellent job. The show also brings in the legendary Peter O'Toole as Pope Paul III, mainly to show the reactions to Henry's policies in Rome. This is a bit of an odd move, as this storyline never really goes anywhere. The Pope commands King Francis I of France to invade England, an ominous development which is subsequently ignored, and is later shown having frustrated episodes over the work of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Amusing, but it forms a digression that might have been better spent in England fleshing out the existing, more prominent characters. O'Toole is, of course, brilliant, but his presence in this role does feel a little bit of a waste of a major casting coup.

Natalie Dormer continues doing excellent work as Anne Boleyn, and has the difficult task of portraying the queen's descent into paranoia as she suffers miscarriages and earns the king's enmity. The show adopts a sympathetic approach to the queen, showing her to be distressed by her inability to bear the king a living son and innocent of the charges brought against her (though heavily indicating that she may have been promiscuous as a youth before meeting the king). Jeremy Northam also does good work as Sir Thomas More, the man of conscience and integrity who tries to balance his belief in his faith with his love for the king and dies for it.

In the central role of Henry VIII, Jonathan Rhys Meyers shows early signs of improvement over his inert Season 1 performance. This may be attributable to his decision to 'do a Riker' and grow a beard between seasons. Unfortunately, the beard is rather unimpressive (a quarter-Riker at best) and his performance soon returns to a binary state of either being coldly inscrutable or insanely furious. Scenes which require him to smile or be jovial feel forced and unconvincing, and the less said about the spontaneous way he meets and immediately falls in love with Jane Seymour the better. The whole storyline with Jane Seymour is rather badly handled, with the show deviating even further than it normally does from history (Jane had been at court for a year before Henry and Anne even married) and treating the relationship rather tritely, despite Anita Briem's best efforts with the material.

On the plus side, Henry Cavill improves significantly this season as the king's best friend, Charles Brandon. He shows Brandon's growing maturity as he casts aside his philandering ways to concentrate on his family life, in contrast to Henry's constant flitting between mistresses, and also his growing spiritual crisis of faith at the things he has to do in the name of the Reformation. This is a theme that continues into the third season.

Overall, the second season of The Tudors (***½) is much as the first: it's tosh but watchable tosh which gets a lot of the details of the history wrong but does succeed in nailing the broader picture. However, the second season is elevated over the first by the richer, more dramatic events being depicted and some improvements in both writing and acting. It is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

The Tudors: Season 1

England, 1519. King Henry VIII rules England and is beloved by his people. His wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, is popular and the king's chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, is able and formidable in administering the country and defeating plots against the throne. Another of Henry's advisors is Sir Thomas More, a man of great conscience and integrity whose respect and friendship the king values.

However, it is a difficult time in Europe. The Lutheran heresy is raging unchecked in Germany and the Pope is unable to defeat it. King Francis I of France and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V are engaged in a deadly rivalry, both hoping to enlist England as an ally. With his queen - the Emperor's aunt - apparently unable to bear him a son, Henry also begins movements towards a divorce. When he falls in love with the beautiful Anne Boleyn, this matter becomes pressing and threatens a breakdown of relations with Rome.

The Tudors is a television drama produced by the Showtime network and based on the life on Henry VIII, focusing on his relationships with his six wives and the political and religious turmoil that resulted. The first season covers a period of roughly eleven years, running from the accession of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor (in 1519) to the death of Cardinal Wolsey (in 1530). However, real historical events are compressed, combined or moved around in the timeline to read better as part of the drama. The contentious marriage of Charles Brandon to Henry's sister Mary Tudor (slightly confusingly changed to Margaret in the TV series) happened in 1515, but is moved to later on to create an interesting mid-season subplot, for example.

The Tudors plays fast-and-loose with the details of real history, but like HBO's Rome before it, the show does succeed in getting across the events and complications of the period. The complexities of Henry's relationships with fellow European rulers and the Pope are recounted well, as is the seething tension within the English court. As a very rough introduction to the history of the period, The Tudors works, though those interested in the real events are referred to the many history books about the time.

As drama and narrative, The Tudors is something of a mixed bag. The script is inclined towards the expositionary, with surprisingly little incidental flavour, and what there is is often questionable: a scene showing Henry VIII composing 'Greensleeves' is amusing but also cheesy and highly inaccurate (Henry VIII definitely did not write the music to the song and his authorship of the lyrics is questionable, at best). One of the strongest episodes in the season is the one where England is ravaged by disease, as it shows how Tudor England coped with such disasters and features more incidental scenes of life amongst the common folk than other episodes.

The acting is mostly good, with the likes of Nick Dunning (Sir Thomas Boleyn) and Henzy Czerny (the Duke of Norfolk) providing able support. Henry Cavill (Charles Brandon and, more recently, the latest actor to play Superman) is good as one of Henry's few true friends, though he arguably may have made a better Henry VIII himself. Maria Doyle Kennedy gives an excellent performance as Catherine of Aragorn, mixing palpable fear and worry over not being able to give the king an heir with pride and anger at the thought of being set aside. Natalie Dormer is given the hard job of portraying Anne Boleyn, the woman a king plunged a nation into anarchy for, and almost pulls it off. She is hamstrung by the indifferent script, especially as the story skips large chunks of their courtship and the precise reasons for the king's fascination with her are left somewhat ambiguous: in the TV show she simply appears to play hard to get, fascinating the king who normally just has to nod his head to get a woman into bed with him. Given their seven-year courtship and the intensity of Henry's feelings towards her, this feels rather inadequate as an explanation.

Central to this first season is Sam Neill, who plays Cardinal Wolsey with just the right mix of intelligence, political scheming and ruthless anger. Wolsey is presented as something of an antagonistic figure, but he is also shown to be a caring family man (Wolsey had a wife and two children) and to be utterly devoted to the king. As Wolsey repeatedly fails to get the annulment Henry wants, he becomes more desperate and Neill portrays Wolsey's descent with passion and intensity. Neill is possibly the highlight of the first season. Jeremy Northam also gives an excellent performance as Sir Thomas More, highlighting both More's well-known piety, intelligence and integrity but also his darker side, such as his commitment to burning heretics and Protestants at the stake.

Where the series falters - and it's quite a big misstep - is the casting of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in the central role of Henry VIII. Eight years prior to The Tudors, Rhys-Meyers had played the coldly cunning role of Steerpike in the BBC's adaptation of Gormenghast, and bizarrely he seems to be playing Henry VIII in much the same manner. The real Henry VIII is noted for his charisma and vivaciousness, his force of personality sweeping up those around him. Whilst Rhys-Meyers certainly nails the king's intelligence, confidence and raging temper when thwarted, his performance is also often cold, desperate and occasionally whiny. I can understand the idea of subverting the traditional image of the fat, middle-aged Henry VIII by showing him as a young man in the prime of life, but Rhys-Meyers simply fails to get across the complexities of the real historical figure.

Fortunately, this is not quite as disastrous as it might be supposed: The Tudors may be about Henry VIII, but the series follows those around him more than the monarch himself, and the emphasis is on the court and period as a whole rather than on the one man by himself.

From a technical viewpoint, the series is well-directed. The use of CGI to flesh out the castles and stately homes of England is interesting and rather ahead of its time (and makes up for the fact that the show was filmed in Ireland, with limited or no access to some of the real locations portrayed in the series), though also sometimes distracting. Early in the season we have relatively brief camera shots of locations that try not to dwell on their computer-generated nature. Later in the season we have rather distracting rapid camera movements and broad shots of locations which are clearly CGI and artificial (and whilst the CGI is good for 2007 and the show's limited budget, it's still not great), creating a bit of a dissonance once we switch to the live-action scenes.

The first season of The Tudors (***) is flashy, fun and enjoyable but also lightweight. The lack of historical accuracy is not a major problem - the show at least portrays the real events, if not always in the right order or with the correct details - though the uncharismatic performance of the lead actor and a sometimes indifferent and flavourless script certainly are. Luckily, most of the other actors are excellent and as a rough introduction to the time period and events, the show does work. It is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).