The Tragedy of The Tudors

By Heather Huntington on August 18th, 2009

• Share
• Link to StumbleUpon
• 3 Comments

Hey, remember when I waxed all poetic about what TV series to catch up on over the summer? Well, I decided for myself that I’d start on watching The Tudors. Why did I do that?

Based, obviously, on the perpetually fascinating life of King Henry VIII, The Tudors bears the mark of everything Showtime knows how to do right–and wrong. Like Queer as Folk (and, for that matter, anything Showtime likes to show into the late night hours), it’s M.O. is to be a little salacious and sexy and racy. In this way, they do well. Jonathan Rhys Meyers‘ Henry gives a very mission-statement-esque portrayal of a young, vigorous Henry, constantly occupied with sinking his teeth into the flesh of either ripe dripping fruit or ripe dripping ladies. Like Weeds, this makes the portrayal of Henry a little unorthodox–not the buttoned up, boring BBC view of history one usually gets.

In this way, Tudors should be great. Making viewers able to see the historical figures as real people with real modern wants and needs makes it much more accessible for the massess–and me. Unfortunately, Showtime takes this great premise and then, basically, fucks it to death. In what I see as the following ways:

1. Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I am not sure there is any more unlikeable actor of his age range. Or others, for that matter. True, I haven’t met him, and there is always the possibility that in person he is a pussycat, he comes off as possibly the most angry and egotistical man yet to walk the earth. Who, perhaps, spends every last second of his time looking in the mirror and admiring his own lips. In case you doubt this, I will just tell you that his real name is Johnny O’Keefe, so he even had to cook up a more pretentious name for himself.  I get that this makes perfect casting sense for Henry–it is casting perfectly within type–but it still makes him hard to watch.

2. Other casting. Sure, I like Gabrielle Anwar. I even think she is sort of fun in her role. I also think she is about 20 years older than her character would have been, and 20 times tanner. Seriously, a near-40 yet unmarried English royal who looks like she’s been laying on the Rivera for a decade? Not so much. And don’t get me started on the girl who plays Anne Boleyn. Please note: Irish actress Maria Doyle Kennedy who plays Catherine of Aragon so well that I was certain she was actually Spanish is a complete exception to this rule.

3. Overacting. There seems to be a general directive on this show to chew the living shit out of the scenery. I’m not sure why this is necessary, but to has basically turned an English (i.e. reserved) historical drama into a Spanish telenovella. The melodrama is so excruciating that this, in the end, is what broke me. After watching people grunt and mug and yelp and all but put their hand to their brow and fan themselves, my husband and I couldn’t take it anymore. JRM’s terrible arm wrestling match at the end of Season 1 Disk 2 was the nail in the coffin. We sent it back to Netflix and took the rest of the disks off our list.

4. Historical inaccuracies. What kept us in it for even Disk 2 was the real parts of the Henry VIII story. I generally find history pretty boring, but if you turn it into a movie or TV show suddenly the medicine goes down much easier–more like entertainment. Of course, I understand there is liberty taken in this situation. But when after an episode in which I see Henry VIII’s sister Princess Margaret kill her husband, the King of Portugal, I run to Wikipedia and discover that actually she is a composite of two of Henry’s sisters, one of whom married the King of France, who died several months later of natural causes, I can’t take it anymore. The real story has more than enough twists and intrigue of its own; why say you’re doing a story on Henry VIII and then just start making things up?

So, we’ve had it. I’ll get my history lessons elsewhere. JRM (or Johnny O’Keefe, or whatever) can go look at his lips in the mirror some more; I’m not joining him.
(Pic courtesy of Sho.com)
And check out a clip from the show: