The Tudors Intrigues But Hasn't Quite Gripped Me Yet

When I think of Henry VIII, my first association tends to be the maddeningly catchy song by Herman’s Hermits, while my second is the corpulent figure presented in several paintings. Lately, though, I’ve been getting another look at this infamous monarch thanks to The Tudors, the series created by Michael Hirst that begins with Henry as a virile young man.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers stars as King Henry, who is surrounded by people anxious to improve their station through his royal favor. Most of the characters on the show are schemers driven by ambition and lust for power rather than any noble purpose, and even those who serve a higher calling, such as future saint Thomas More (Jeremy Northam), can be hideously cruel. One of the few truly sympathetic main characters is Catherine of Aragon (Maria Doyle Kennedy), who is devoutly religious and deeply wounded by her husband’s lack of interest in her.

As a Lutheran, I find it interesting to hear all the comments on Martin Luther, who was just beginning to become a concern for the Catholic Church and its orthodox members. Several characters have strong opinions about him, and most of them are quite virulent. Meanwhile, in the first season, Henry is moving toward the establishment of the Anglican Church, which will allow him to divorce Catherine and take another wife.

That wife-to-be is Anne Boleyn, played by Natalie Dormer with a restrained seductive ferocity. She is a vixen who really knows how to capture and hold the king’s attention by flirting while maintaining her distance, but there is a pathetic quality to her as well because she is being used as a puppet for her conniving father Thomas (Nick Dunning), who, like Sam Neill’s cunning Cardinal Wolsey, is willing to stoop to just about anything for the chance to grasp more power.

Visually, the show is impressive, fully immersing viewers in the world of 1500s England. The acting is uniformly excellent as well. Because the series is on Showtime, it is able to be more grittily realistic than a network television show might be, though it’s frankly a bit more graphic than I would prefer. We’re treated to several fairly intense scenes involving trysts between characters, and more than that, most episodes include grotesque deaths, whether through execution, duels, suicide or illness. One episode involving the plague is fit for Halloween with a plot and images that are truly nightmare-worthy.

The first season has ten episodes, and each is expertly crafted in terms of props and costumes. It’s difficult to latch onto many characters, though, because few of them are very likable, not to mention the fact that it’s a pretty sure bet most of them won’t be around very long. The series also has a very somber tone to it, with virtually no humor to offset the often oppressive intrigues. It is interesting to get this glimpse, however embellished, into 16th-century Europe, but this is a show perhaps best suited to history buffs and those with a high tolerance for unpleasantness.