I Love The Tudors
I have recently been catching up on series three of The Tudors and, having now got about half way through, I am feeling an outpouring of love and gushing admiration for the show. I think it is outstanding in every conceivable way. Superlative, in fact. There is no bettering it.
It has to be said, in the main, I am not a big fan of British TV. I was therefore predisposed towards disliking The Tudors when I began the second series (having missed the first one). At the risk of making a sweeping statement, it seems to me that British shows are usually inferior in the extreme to their American counterparts (except for Jane Austen type period dramas, which the British do very well). I can’t conceive of a British version of Stargate or Star Trek, for example, that would not be terrible. Perhaps the money just isn’t there. But the acting is a problem for me as well. If it seems cheesy and unbelievable, then I can’t get involved in it. Dr Who is the classic offender. I made myself watch two episodes, and it was like watching a Christmas pantomime. Which is odd, because I do think David Tennant, in other roles, can act. So maybe it’s the corny script writing instead.
I can’t quite put my finger on it but, for whatever reason, British TV doesn’t usually work for me. Even Merlin, which I really like, is not quite up to American standards. The Tudors, on the other hand, is another story altogether. It’s the only show of its type that I think the Americans couldn’t possibly improve upon. It ticks all the boxes. It is entertaining, sexy, violent and exciting. The acting, costumes, production, direction and writing are all truly excellent. I can’t fault a single actor in the whole show. I am terrified of, yet morbidly fascinated by, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry, and am so convinced by him in this role that I actually can’t imagine him doing something normal like having a pint down the pub.
Natalie Dormer, the actress who plays Anne Boleyn, does an absolutely fantastic job of what seems rather a difficult part to play. Her performance is practically mesmerising. Not to mention the fact that she is stunningly beautiful. If I were going to have a girl-crush on anyone . . . but let’s not go there. Of course, Dormer, sadly, does not feature in the third series because, well, we all know what happened to Anne.
Moving on, despite the lavishness, polish and professionalism of the series, I have seen it criticised for not being 100% historically accurate and, I have to say, I think this accusation is absurd. Michael Hirst has stated: “Showtime commissioned me to write an entertainment, a soap opera, and not history … And we wanted people to watch it.” Seems fair enough to me. I am a history buff myself, but if I want to seriously learn more about history then I wouldn’t think to do it by watching a TV show. I would watch a documentary or read a book. I don’t watch The Tudors to learn more about the period, I watch it to be entertained. The story comes first! Besides which, the show itself is so good that I’m sure many people find their interest in the Tudor period piqued, and then try to find out more later. If Michael Hirst had to be slavishly faithful to historical fact then the series would not be so good, and so less people would watch it. If Henry, for example, were an obese man waddling grotesquely about the Royal Court, would anyone want to see any of his erotic dalliances? I seriously think not.
This show makes history accessible – bringing it “to the masses” as it were. I’m sure it has inspired many more people to take an interest in Henry VIII and his times than any dry, historical article ever did. I therefore think it quite ridiculous that historians like David Starkey (who I have been inclined to dislike ever since his unnecessarily antagonistic attitude towards his fellow panelists on Question Time) should brand the show as “gratuitously awful”, simply because it is not one hundred percent accurate. Not only do I think it impossible for a show like this to be entirely accurate, I do not think that it should be. If it is slavishly faithful to fact, to the point that only professional historians have any interest in watching it, then the show would soon be cancelled due to a fatal case of gross unpopularity. Shooting itself in the foot, as it were. A Pyrrhic victory indeed.
So, personally, I’m afraid I would have to dismiss as pure nonsense the claim that the Tudors is ruined because it sometimes takes liberties with dates, dress or characters. I love the show – I do not want a fat Henry – and I would dearly love to see it go on to cover Mary and Elizabeth’s reigns as well.
Tags: Great TV
October 18th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I discovered this series recently when I was trying to figure out what roles Tamzin Merchant had played (she is slated to play Daenerys Targaryen in the much anticipated HBO adaptation of the George R.R. Martin behemoth, A Game of Thrones), and was blown away. I’m aware that some of the dates and visuals are inaccurate, but somehow I’m not too bothered by it.
(Oddly enough, I have less patience for historical inaccuracies in cinematic renditions of the classical era. That might have more to do with the fact that until I left high school I wanted to be a scholar of the Classics and spent ages carefully researching the lives of the various Roman Emperors and the various wars in Greece. I can’t watch most “historical” Chinese movies without feeling an insane urge to commit homicide on the directors, scriptwriters, and the costume crew, so that probably suggests that the more familiar you are with that period of history and that geographical region the more difficult it is for you to suspend disbelieve and just enjoy the show.)
That being said, The Tudors is on my list of shows to sit down and watch slowly. And I’m with you on the quality of British television. I vastly prefer the American to the British.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I completely agree with you…..in the main. I just think that most people coming to this series would expect it to be historically accurate, and in the absence of anything informing them to the contrary, will come away with a number of misconceptions. How important this is is another matter, but I really can’t see why Henry can’t get a chubbier as the series progresses. I suppose you don’t think he should age at all either? Totally agree though - both the acting and the production values are excellent.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Kwok Ting Lee - it probably is true that the more knowledgeable you are, the harder it is to suspend your disbelief. I find this when watching anything Kennedy related (Thirteen Days and JFK).
Sam-I-Am - I think that by the very nature of the show, most people will realise that it is not going to be accurate in *every* respect. It’s a jazzed up, modern re-telling. If there was an official statement warning you of this at the beginnning I would find it superfluous, silly and somewhat irritating. Besides which, the vast majority of the show’s content is accurate so the potential for misconceptions is minute compared to what people might actually learn.
Chubby/elderly Henry isn’t sexy Henry. Changing his character in that way would fundamentally alter the nature of the show, and bring a definite ick factor to the sex scenes.
Having said that, if it was done in the right way then I wouldn’t necessarily have a huge problem with Henry aging and getting fatter, but I’m glad they haven’t chosen to go that way. The beauty of fiction, surely, is that entertainment comes first, and there is that option to tweak the facts a bit.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:30 am
Hmmm, you’ve not seen enough American television by the sounds of it.
Most of it NEEDS the canned laughter because it is so terribly, horribly bad that it really is the only way to figure out when you’re supposed to laugh. The humor, usually, is morose and requires absolutely no thought or imagination. There is no subtlety at all.
Having said that, high budget shows like Startrek and that ilk are obviously a different matter - but you have to compare like with like; in all fairness, “Blake’s 7″ was a low cost show, but not bad for its time. Look at “the Professionals” from the 80s, and “Auf Wiedersehen Pet”, and then obviously things like that darling buds of May, and that wonderful hilarious one - oh my gawd what was that called again - they chaps who had offices in Tokyo, Paris and Peckham… you know who I mean. On top of all that, there is, of course Dr Who, which has to count as one of the best and longest running shows of them all.
So : don’t bash English TV shows - there’s some really good ones around, but with a budget paid for by 60 millions Brits and limited advertising, the budgets are more limited than what we have here with paid advertising nicely footing the bill. If you wanted to get it really right, let’s get some English writers/producers and let them loose with an American budget. Provided it didn’t get to their heads, the results might just be absolutely stunning, and actually humerous in the process!
February 10th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Seeing as American television covers 90% of what I watch, I do not think I could be accused of not watching enough of it!
Your point about canned laughter refers only to sitcoms, and that is not what I am discussing here. However, I do think shows such as Frasier, Friends, and The Big Bang Theory are extremely funny, and wonderfully well done. As were Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, Mr Ed, Hogan’s Heroes and so on before them. The Americans have always been exceptionally good at producing this kind of show, many of which have gone on to receive cult status, so I’m afraid I cannot accept in any way whatsoever, the suggestion that any British comedy (dire rubbish like Little Britain, for example) can come anywhere close to those mentioned above. Perhaps I have more of an ‘American’ sense of humour than a British one but, to me, they are simply not in the same class.
As for the assertion that canned laughter is ‘necessary’ to show people where to laugh - if the show were that bad, most people would not watch it at all. Let’s give the general viewing public a little credit here and assume they are not all mindless automatons, or else all discussion of this matter is instantly moot.
I am certainly not condemning all British TV. Indeed, the entire point of this post was to commend, whole heartedly, a British show. I love Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf as much as the next guy. Clearly, issues of budget do come into it, but I do not think fundamentally bad shows can be excused on grounds of having a low budget. Fawlty Towers is low budget - and brilliant; Primeval, which had decent special effects and so must have had a substantial budget, was crap. Riddled with plot holes and corny acting. Ditto for Doctor Who.
So I think I will stick with the American shows for now, irrespective of the canned laughter.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:52 am
Hear, hear! Just so. Too true. Absolutely! You never said a truer word - and all that. Quite a few English programmes do make the grade - Steptoe & Son was another English comedy classic (which made use of canned laughter, by the way)- but normally there’s no comparison. There’s a certain ‘corny-ness’ to a lot of English productions. It’s in both the script-writing and acting. The result is that one has an overwhelming sense of watching something cheap and amateur, even when it is clearly neither. Little Britain? Dr Who? Er….no thanks!
February 11th, 2010 at 6:24 am
I will admit to a similar preference for American television. I’ve watched Cantonese television produced in Hong Kong and British and a dash of German television, and to date I think American television is the most consistently good. (Which is not to deny that there is some incredibly bad tripe on American television. There is indeed.)
(Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed the over-the-top craziness of Doctor Who, and I do think that David Tennant is incredibly sexy and-based also on his performances outside of Doctor Who-incredibly talented. I also think that there are moments when Doctor Who does manage to rise above its corny-ness and its over-the-top craziness to deal with some very interesting questions of what it means to be alone, and what it can mean to realize that you are the last of your kind. Besides, there’s a lot of Doctor Who that has permeated the cultural space of anyone brought up with a connection to the old country: Daleks and Cybermen and that police box and all that malarkey. And I am enjoying the Tudors.)
However, in terms of truly great television, there’s no arguing with the success of the Americans. I dare anyone to say that Angel and Buffy have not permeated the cultural consciousness so thoroughly that we can toss references to them with a reasonable chance that people will know what we are talking about. Star Trek gave us such phrases as “Beam me up, Scotty”, “warp drives”, “Klingons” and “Set phasers to stun” (and various permutations thereof). Lost has become quite an incredible success. The Big Bang Theory is hilarious, and How I Met Your Mother has the fantastic Neil Patrick Harris delivering wonderful performances as Barney. Babylon 5 gave us a remarkable vision of a series with a defined story arc that spread itself over many seasons and genuine continuity between episodes. (We’ll ignore the way that some of the dialogue grates on the ear and how sometimes JMS seemed to lose sight of the trees in his attempt to focus on the forest.)
It is a fallacy to suggest that all this success was simply a result of a bigger budget. The talent of such individuals as Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, and JMS has been to create worlds that resonate with us. They’ve made us believe in their characters and feel for them. The best British (and Cantonese and German) television is likewise able to do that. However, they just don’t do it often enough. And the proper way to encourage these industries to produce better work is to critique their failings and force them to raise their game. They cannot claim low budgets as the only reason for their inability to produce memorable television. Nor can they suggest that American television is “low-brow”, or caters to crass commercial interests.
February 11th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Sam-I-Am - yes, Steptoe and Son is definitely another great one. I’m fond of Dad’s Army as well.
Kwok Ting Lee - it’s almost like we’re the same person! People who know me are going to start suspecting you are just a pen name of mine, and that I am writing your remarks myself in order to bulk up the comments section of my blog
As for Dr Who, it has to be said that I only watched one full episode. Other than that I have just caught occasional snippets but, so far, never enought to tempt me back into giving it another chance.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:18 am
And I’ve neglected to admit that I used to thoroughly love Dr Who, and thrilled at all the early episodes with William Hartnell and the Daleks etc, normally from around the back of the sofa!
For the past almost 40 years or so, however….not so much.
Will always love that original theme tune though!
February 12th, 2010 at 7:24 am
Hahaha. I suspect that one of these days I will have to show up at a book signing of yours, then, and have a photograph taken to disprove the theory of the “pen name”.
Might take a while, though, given that I’m in Asia at the moment and have little interest in flying to the old country (or continent). There’s too much of Asia to see: Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Indonesia and the many many provinces of China and all the islands of Japan, and Korea and perhaps even India if I can get one of my colleagues to give me his top secret list of authentic Indian experiences (not the horribly packaged stuff that they try to sell to the tourists).
But back to the topic at hand, I just thought of an example of true brilliance that was done (by Americans) on a relatively small budget: Gattaca. Distinctive art direction, and a beautiful plot (not really that original, I’ll admit, but well written), and superb acting by a fine cast. The budget (if it is not ludicrously small) is less important than the quality of the acting, the script, and underlying story.
October 25th, 2010 at 9:55 am
The Big Bang Theory, for me, is the best nerd-chick comedy out there, i wish that this tv series runs longer`~.