The Tudors makes diverting royal soap, helped by Maria Doyle Kennedy and a persuasive sense of courtly wealth. Its impatient king and wandering pace make it harder to recommend as serious historical drama.
Michael Hirst’s The Tudors is watchable royal melodrama with a disappointingly narrow idea of its king. It approaches the early reign of Henry VIII of England through appetite, marriage and the people obliged to deal with the consequences. That is a workable way into court politics, particularly when desire can make trouble for everyone nearby. The difficulty is that the series keeps returning to the same explanation for its ruler’s behaviour: he wants something and resents being denied it. The supporting cast gives us good reason to keep watching.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers supplies the impatience readily enough, and his energy suits a drama determined to avoid solemn historical pageantry. We can understand the attraction of a king who behaves badly without pausing to justify himself. But the performance offers too little variation in that wilfulness, and the writing does not give him enough competing impulses to make him difficult to predict. After a while, another royal demand does little to sharpen our understanding. The political discussion has to work around a ruler whose reactions have become familiar.
We felt for Maria Doyle Kennedy’s Catherine of Aragon because she makes the hurt within the marriage matter amid all the manoeuvring. Her performance gives the prospect of divorce a human cost that the series otherwise risks treating as a complication to be managed. She also gives us someone worth listening to when the royal appetites have become tiresome. Sam Neill’s Cardinal Thomas Wolsey brings welcome composure to the surrounding politics. Both performances allow thought to register without requiring another explanation of what everyone wants.
The court is persuasive as a place where people enjoy having money and position. Tom Conroy’s production design supplies the wealth, while Joan Bergin’s costumes make the effort of presenting oneself for inspection seem part of daily life. Ousama Rawi’s cinematography helps sustain that sense of display, though the murk around the sex scenes is less useful. Those passages can feel oddly dutiful for a programme so keen to seem uninhibited. We are given plenty of intimacy without consistently learning much about the people involved.
The writing is frequently too helpful about its intrigues, spelling out tensions before the actors have much chance to establish them. Michael Hirst gives the court enough competing interests to sustain curiosity, but the early signposting makes some exchanges feel like preparation for the next exchange. The attention to historical detail is welcome, even when the drama takes liberties. We need not demand a lesson from every costume drama. We can still expect a clearer sense of why these particular people matter to one another.
Editors Wendy Hallam Martin and Lisa Grootenboer face a difficult balance between private encounters and public business, and the pace sometimes drifts despite all the activity. The programme can be busy without feeling as though it has moved far. Trevor Morris’s music supplies some of the gravity missing from the king’s characterisation. There is still dependable pleasure in watching capable performers negotiate this court. The problem is the time spent waiting for the next exchange with someone as interesting as Catherine of Aragon.
Historical television can take pleasure in bad behaviour without turning every conversation into a lesson. This series belongs with the court melodramas, and its appeal depends on how much time we want to spend with privileged people pursuing their appetites. A stronger account of the politics would have made their decisions more interesting to follow. Try it if court gossip is enough to carry an evening; expect to exercise some patience whenever the king takes charge.
