Showtime’s The Tudors

This is a very pretty show to watch. The costumes all look brand new and the actors are all scrubbed and beautiful beyond words. I know they are all supposed to be royalty and high members of the Catholic Church, but it still seems a bit odd that everything is as pretty as a freshly minted coin. I grew up watching all the classics in PBS with my dear old mum, so I watched The Six Wives of Henry the VIII at an early age and found it baffling, but entertaining. I feel much the same here.
For starters, I was in England a few years back and we took the obligatory tour of The Tower of London. Housed within the Tower, among any number of way cool things, is Henry’s suit of armor. This is a large suit of armor with a large and impressive codpiece. It is built for a man of 6 foot 2 inches tall. In Henry’s time this was a pretty good sized man. Yet in the Tudors, we have a short and scrawny fellow playing the part of Henry. He has a good Elvis snarl that he employees a lot, even if he is a bit short. Are there no tall Englishman that could have played this role? Or this fellow the Brad Pitt of England and I am just missing the boat here?
With the exception of Sam Neal this cast of pretty young people are unknown to me. They all seem a bit familiar in that they all look so very British. It is great fun to watch and they all do a good job, whether encased in their skintight costumes or as they so often are, in their bare skin.
The cast of characters is made up solidly of pure villainy. There is not a white hat to be had in this show, they are all evil. And yet, I find myself feeling a great deal of pity for Cardinal Wolsey, played wonderfully by Sam Neil. He is a bad man, but when things start to go wrong for him, he turns into a child begging for his master’s help.
The pace of the show is slow, giving a lot of time for minor details and small touches, like following around a singer and composer named Thomas Tallis, whom I had never heard of before. Not all that surprising as I am not a huge fan of Medieval religious music. His story is one of the odder ones so far, as he is both gay and married and seems to be able to tell when someone is going to die.
There were a few times when modern jargon found it’s way into the charters mouths and that was a bit distracting, but by and large the Rock Opera feel of the piece has worked very well. Thankfully it was not taken to the ridiculous extreme of A Knight’s Tale.
This first season has been very good and I look forward to the next.

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