There is a cautionary lesson within THE TUDORS, the vibrant, lush, and suitably visceral mini-series depicting the life, loves, and politics of England’s Henry VIII. Henry, played with frank carnality by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, fancies himself a humanist, the fashionable thing to be during the Renaissance. Under the tutelage of Thomas More, soon to be a martyr and later a saint, he has determined to be an enlightened monarch. At one point in the first episode, he is telling More (played by Jeremy Northam) about a new book he’s just read, “The Prince” by someone named Machiavelli. The book, and now Henry, ponders the question of which is better, to be loved or to be feared. The rest of the series is dedicated to Henry’s decision about that.
From THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII, to A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, to television’s “The Six Wives of Henry VIII,” the monarch’s desperate longing for a male heir to insure the continuance of the fledgling Tudor dynasty, and the lengths he went to in order to get one are familiar territory. He married and disposed of wives when marriage was truly an until death did one part proposition, broke with the Pope and set himself up as the head of his own church in a time when heresy could get you excommunicated and burned at the stake, and ran roughshod over politics, domestic and foreign, that were in his own best interests.
It’s a cliché to say that Henry was a man of enormous appetites. One only has to see portraits of him in his old age, an enormously fat man plagued with gout and dyspepsia. But Meyers breathes new life into the young Henry, catching both the intellect and his impulsive, voracious capacity for life itself, whether on the tennis court or the bedroom, not just for another leg of mutton. He has a sensuality coupled with a sense of unpredictability that is mesmerizing. The supporting cast is equally able, particularly Sam Neill as the Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s Chancellor, the essence of political expediency, smooth, brilliant, and fully capable of physically throttling those who might cross him even while decked out in full clerical regalia. These two are so good that even knowing how it all turns out, there is that tantalizing sense of uncertainty merely because of how they play off one another.
Intelligent writing by Michael Hirst, who penned the screenplay for ELIZABETH, manages the enormous amount of (mostly accurate) historical context, and shimmers with educated guesses. The most intriguing pops up early on, with Anne Boleyn’s own father actively pimping out not just her, but her elder sister as well in order to further the family fortunes. And there is no coyness at all about what skills the girls picked up at the French court that kept Henry interested. As to how, and even if, both parties fell in love or something close to it, that question has its own twists to it. When the story strays from strict accuracy, it’s in the service of a ripping good yarn that may play fast and loose with the facts, but keeps close to the spirit of the times, at least as seen through Hirst’s eyes. These characters are brought to vivid life, and given enough machinations to keep things running with an irresistible, breathless pace.
The DVD allows what the Showtime presentation could not: a good long wallow by watching all ten episodes in a row. Cliffhangers abound, as do plots and counterplots. The extras include a look at the cottage industry involved in clothing hundreds of actors and extras is period clothing and showcase how Irish locations were made into a convincing version of Tudor England.
As for the cautionary quality of the series, it’s laid out without apology. The most decent man in the story, Thomas More, a brilliant mind but a cockeyed idealist, refuses to do what Woolsey advises he must in order to remain in Henry’s good graces. He must give up that which he holds most dear. For Woolsey, it’s merely real estate, for More, it’s his integrity when Henry breaks with Rome. That’s where the martyrdom comes in. Life, as Hobbes famously said about these times, was nasty, brutish, and short. THE TUDORS, for all its enthralling sumptuousness, never loses sight of that fact.
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