Fun and engaging, but let’s hope things don’t devolve into a dreary Countdown to the Beheading.
The recap of last season’s events were exhausting enough to make you feel as old and broken down as King Henry VIII (John Rhys Meyers) is at the start of this fourth and final season of The Tudors. One of the inherent challenges of dramatizing historical events is that there are certain facts – Inglorious Basterds alt-history revisionism aside – you can’t get around. Henry did marry a bunch of women for a bunch of reasons, got out of those marriages in different ways (beheadings, ex-communications, natural death), and became presumably older and crotchetier in the process, no help coming from a leg injury depicted as resulting from a jousting match. Therefore I found The Tudors to be delivering diminishing returns during Season Three as we saw Jane Seymour’s (Anita Briem) brief tenure as Queen pass along to Anne of Cleves (Joss Stone), or Anne “she looks like a horse!” Cleves if you like.
As a quick further aside before we delve into Season Four, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgia for the age of the Boleyns. Anne Boleyn was a fascinating presence, well played by Natalie Dormer, and the machinations involving her (pimp?) father Thomas Boleyn (Nick Dunning), the French influence on the English throne, Thomas More (Jeremy Northam), and the role of poor first wife Catherine of Aragon (Maria Doyle Kennedy) all worked wonderfully together. If I have a small quibble with The Tudors, it’s that they did not play this era a bit longer storytelling-wise, when intrigue was at its peak and we had a younger and somewhat more vivacious Henry. But at its best, The Tudors is a very good show that brings history alive and its many flawed, lusty, and complex players with it.
As we open the fourth season, Henry has seemingly easily dispatched of Anne of Cleves and has swiftly married young and giggly and now new Queen Katherine (Tamzin Merchant). It feels as though the torture that Henry has put the nation through (creating the Church of England, encouraging the Reformation before purging its strongest supporters, near civil war) has given way to acquiescence for his actions. He doesn’t like his current wife? Fine, find an excuse to dump her and move with the younger and prettier model. Even snogging it up with young Katherine in front of the royal court doesn’t seem to ruffle anyone’s feathers none too much these days. However, Henry seems to be happy and cheerful for the first time in a gloomy series of ages/episodes, telling Charles that “sex is a great medicine.”
But as has long been the case in the House of Tudor, the queen’s quarters are often a hotbed of intrigue. Immediately we see an old friend from the past appear who may or may not bring up certain untoward aspects of the young queen’s past, as long as she’s made a Lady in Waiting, that is. And a young courtier to the king who presents gifts to Katherine may be enjoying his work a little bit too much. Further, we see Mary Tudor (Sarah Bolger) arrive and stonily receive Katherine’s well-meant if girlish overtures. Can you imagine rolling up to your dad’s house to meet his fifth wife, a 17-year-old girl?
There are new characters at court as well, including Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (David O’Hara, whose voice I immediately recognized as that of Fitzy in The Departed). When asked by Charles Brandon (Henry Cavill) what he thinks of English Court, Surrey replies, “I find it full of mean creatures. Many of whom are in the employ of his majesty.” Surrey looks to be a player in terms of both political and ribald doings within the Tudor court. Speaking of politics, Henry is mellowing to an extent in his older age, provoking the French but seeming somewhat satisfied and even wistful when the fail to take the bait.
But because history is history, we can pretty much see where this season is heading. This episode was fun and engaging for the most part, but I hope things don’t devolve into a dreary Countdown to the Beheading before Henry and The Tudors say adieu.
More thoughts on this week’s Tudors:
- Those guys running after the royals’ horses with dogs while they’re hunting must be getting a ton of exercise.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.