The Tudors

[Nubbins]

I've been meaning to start watching this... Adding it to my Netflix right now.

[nacho]

It really is highly fictionalized.  And it needs to be, to capitalize on the drama.  Otherwise it's a bunch of Tudor-era English people gallivanting around and being a bunch of wankers. 

Once you make peace with that and just settle in for the story according to Showtime, it really does rock.  And they are sticking to the basic framework of the history, so there aren't any surprises like a flying dog rescuing Anne Boleyn.  When it comes to the horrible fate that everyone met historically, they do not pull their punch.  It's delicious. 

We're only up to Jane Seymour in the third season.  Anne of Cleves is on IMDB for this season, so I don't know if they're going to stick with each season seeing the death of a wife and the arrival of a new one or not.  The first two seasons rushed through a decade or so, and Seymour was only alive for a year after she became queen.  But a lot did happen... The revolution against him, and the Dissolution begins in earnest.  We haven't yet gotten there... Cromwell's "Visitation of the Monasteries," though violent, was just about record taking.  How much land and money did they have, etc.  This first episode of season three has Cromwell's aide tell him how much the church is worth, and Cromwell is 

So, now, the Dissolution begins.  And holy fuck is that insane.

[nacho]

However -- a warning.  Everytime I see a queen of England with a dog, I have to watch that Spalding Rockwell video.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11ftLeMjlw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11ftLeMjlw</a>

[Nubbins]

Also I thought Henry was a huge fatass.  I remember seeing one of his suits of armor in a museum and it was enormous.

[nacho]

Also I thought Henry was a huge fatass.  I remember seeing one of his suits of armor in a museum and it was enormous.

He was very thin and active until 1536 when he fucked up his legs in an accident.  Then he started to get fat, depressed, and disgusting. 

[nacho]

Well, I continue to enjoy the show.  Season three is a bit overwrought in that Emily Bronte way, but the history is still fun.  Or, rather, their version of the history.

I am greatly disappointed to learn, however, that season four -- next season -- will be the last.  We see out old Henry and we end.

So another premature ending of a pay channel's historical program with a huge budget.  Rome gets clumsily yanked, Deadwood gets nixed, and now the Tudors dies after only one Tudor...even though they've been grooming Mary and Elizabeth.

Of those three, The Tudors is the weakest.  But, still, can we please get one of these acclaimed mega-history shows that survives?  I had hopes that the Tudors would take us right through to old Lizzy.  Hell, in my dreamworld Rome stayed on the air through Claudius. But nobody shares my dream world.

[nacho]

The first two episodes of season four (the final season) have leaked.  So now the NW can stare vacantly at the male cast members while I stare at the wall in boredom.

[Matt]

I think without a strong female lead it gets old really fast. I love watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers freak out as much as the next person, but if he doesn't have something to bounce off of, it's just not as good.

[nacho]

Well, he doesn't get that again.  After Howard buys it (which was only after a year, I think) Parr comes in... But, by then, Henry was on the decline thanks to his leg. 

If they were doing this with any real sense of writing and history, the focus this season should be shifting to Mary, who was maneuvering for the throne ahead of Edward and nearly succeeded.  Poor Edward died in his teens and was controlled by a regency council, which Mary was always trying to fuck with.

By Catherine Howard's time, Henry's fate was pretty much written on the wall.  His leg was rotting, he was getting fat and crazy, and he'd pretty much purged every useful adviser.  There was a real focus on establishing a ruling council as everyone knew Edward wouldn't be old enough to rule and Mary was aiming to restore Catholicism. (Of course, Elizabeth wasn't even on the board as a possible successor.)

[nacho]

So the final season is just ridiculously over the top.  We've been canceled! Let's make sure 72% of each episode is TITS!

Which is fine...

They're tried to make Henry a little beefier.  He is, certainly, a little crazier.  Though in these final five years, he was fat and insane with a rotting leg that he refused to treat.  So... Whatever.  The Tudors was never historical.  I want to fist Tamzin Merchant and cut her up and put her in my freezer.  That's all I know.

[nacho]

Dear god, this season has bene beyond horrible.  But, for a show that has thrown history to the wind, they were weirdly devout to Anne Askew.

Though she was probably protected by the book she wrote in the Tower -- which reads like a teleplay itself.  Intrigue, heresy, politics, torture, defiance, and then a very dramatic death at the stake (though there's no evidence that Hartford is the one who paid the executioner to put the gunpowder around her neck).

Anyway.  Sucky season.