The Crown: Season 2, Episode 3- Lisbon

“One always has to accept one’s own part, I believe, in any mess.”

This is a very cleverly structured episode, both in itself and as part of the season. We return, of course, to the Lisbon flash forward where the season began, whet the two plot threads- Eden’s resignation and the climax of the Parker divorce case revelation in the media and the confrontation between Elizabeth and Philip. It’s masterfully done: the train steaming inexorably towards Sandringham for Eden to suffer his drive of shame before resigning is also a symbol of what awaits Philip.

Yet Elizabeth remains, somehow, constitutionally above it all. Eden may try to rationalise things to himself, and to claim that he’s resigning from ill health and not because he’s just been- to use an anachronism- Thatchered by his Cabinet. Macmillan may try and downplay his past support for the Suez misadventure, but the Queen is not unaware. And nor is she unaware of the underlying reasons for Philip’s “restlessness”- again, the question of his possible adultery is left open- or, indeed, unfeeling, whatever the stiff upper lip exterior may show. Claire Foy is utterly sublime here.

The solution- upgrading Phil to a Prince and a crackdown on moustaches- seems unlikely to work. We shall see. Further kids are on the way, the less said about the first of them the better, but Mike is perceptive, in his parting chat with Phil, on the underlying tension between a monarch and their eldest son, who represents their personal extinction.

There is an awful lot going on here- echoes of the Iraq War, but one where the protests claim their scalp; Tommy Lascelles coming back from retirement for a crisis; the Queen and Eileen having a woman to woman talk. The obvious respect both PM’s have for Elizabeth- and her perceptive comments to Eden on how doing nothing is often the wisest course, but not one that may appeal to those wishing themselves to be great men. This is a clever, clever bit of telly.

The Crown: Season 2, Episode 2- A Company of Men

“Men are expected to indulge...”

This is a very, very courageous piece of telly and I’m surprised the subject matter didn’t arouse more controversy at the time. Again, Philip isn’t shown to have been having an affair during his five month tour of the Commonwealth (or indeed previously), but it is implied that he may have been a little naughty- as Eileen, Mike Parker’s disgruntled wife, tells us, the five month trip looks awfully like a very long stag night.

Meanwhile Elizabeth remains at home- calm, unflappable, far too stiff upper lip to allow her feelings to be visible- much as Sir Anthony Eden, humiliated by the Suez debacle, appears to be having a physical and mental breakdown as the drugs no longer work. But this is not an episode for geopolitics, much as Lord Mountbatten may scheme- he’s an interesting character.

But a large portion of the episode, expensive looking at that, is given over to Philip’s hi-jinks, interspersed with the odd speech and the occasional Olympics to open. There’s a very symbolic scene in which he rings Elizabeth from the other side of the world but the line is terrible- as ever, they aren’t communicating. But most fascinating is the journalist interviewing Philip in which we are reminded of his traumatic childhood, where revolution in Greece led to parental abandonment and breakdown- and the awkward fact of his Nazi sisters.

We finish with Philip having a long night of the soul, and a family reconciliation of sorts. But, as the start of last episode shows, there are still difficulties to come. The spiralling scandal of Mike and Eileen’s divorce threatens to expose Philip and the tension is palpable. This is good drama, although I’m glad we do t have those stupid lese-majeste laws they have in Thailand. And Matt Smith, in particular, is superb.

The Crown: Season 2, Episode 1- Misadventure

“A prison...?"

It's been years since I saw the first season so this is long overdue. In my defence, there's so much telly to see and blog. But I'm reminded, after this first episode of what I can hardly call the new season, that this is a bloody good programme. And both Claire Foy and Matt Smith excel as ever- as does Jeremy Northam as an increasingly tragic Sir Anthony Eden beneath the apparent patrician poise.

Foy is superb at conveying the deep yet necessarily restrained emotions of a Sovereign, not free to be a person, as her marriage seems to be falling apart, yet divorce is not an option and neither, it seems, is happiness. Monarchy is a gilded cage, and not a humane one. Yet Smith also successfully walks a tigtrope, remaining likeable as an emasculated yet childish paragon of toxic masculinity chafing at his traditionally feminine role and, it's implied, having affairs- although this, I suspect, will never be more than implied. I suspect the picture of a woman found by Elizabeth in his bag will have an innocent explanation, but there are definite hints at infidelity. Their marriage is in trouble.

But can royals ever be happy, or human? The institution is cruel. Look at Margaret, now a careless drunk after being denied happiness last season. Royalty means privilege, comfort and no freedom whatsoever. There are plenty of reminders here of the snobbery that surrounds it. Any debate on the monarchy would always be won by republicans as a no-brainer. And yet, what should we have instead? Do we, in populist 2020, trust our venal politicians with any major constitutional reform?

But the Establishment (a very '50s word) goes beyond this. We first see Eden addressing Eton, hia alma mater, as the sixteenth out of forty prime ministers to have been an Old Etonian. It reminds us that even the sensibly, centrist, Welfare State-supporting Tories of the Butskellite decades were still Tories and not, alas, Whigs, accepting change and reform only as far as they needed to survive.

This is a fascinating mix of themes, of the personal and the political, which are of course profoundly intermingled. Again, I'm hooked.

We see the Suez slowly unfolding in Egypt, to the concern of pretty much everyone, and scenes of the Canal being invaded by British and French troops are juxtaposed with Eden popping pills.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 10- Gloriana

"You have more freedom than any consort in history. And you repay it by scowling and sulking like an adolescent."

As ever, the title of the episode is clever. It's interesting to consider it alongside the final scene, with Elizabeth dressed up all regal and told to be Elizabeth Regina, most definitely not Elizabeth Windsor. This is both the theme and the tragedy of both the episode and the series.

Elizabeth Windsor has her interests- keeping her husband happy with the man she loves and maintaining a happy marriage with her increasingly petulant husband (Phil ends the series being increasingly unlikeable, beastly to both Elizabeth and Charles without sufficient motivation). But it's in the interests of Elizabeth Regina to ruin all this in the name of a glorious yet powerless monarchy and an uncaring Church which seems to exist only to cruelly police people's sex lives. What happens to Margaret and Peter is unspeakably cruel and I can see how Margaret sees the chance to renounce her titles as a liberation- the chains may be made of gold but to be royal is to be enslaved, with no agency, privacy, dignity or power.

And it stays with you. In a powerful scene a desperate Elizabeth asks for advice from her uncle David, the only person alive who knows how she feels- and for once he drops the cynical mask and speaks honestly; there is no escape from these conflicts between person and monarch, not even abdication. These are complex, abstract themes, handled well in a strong finale.

There's another strand to the episode, though. The new PM, Sir Anthony Eden, at first seems much younger and more vigorous than his predecessor, but we gradually see the pills he's taking, the pain he's in and, in the final scene, the recreational drugs he's injecting; is he any more fit for the job than his predecessor was? The trippy final scene makes it clear that Suez is coming.  This veteran foreign secretary has been reduced to a drug-addicted shadow of a man just when it's all about to kick off.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 9- Assassins

"I'm not sure I could trust a Modernist with an English name..."

There's a lot bubbling away in that troublesome marriage between Elizabeth and Phil- not least that, as he gets sloshed with his ra-ra mates, she's hanging around with her friend (and old flame), Porchy, who shares her interest in horses, an interest which Phil does not share. Things are clearly building towards a head next episode, But this episode is all about Winston.

It's November 1954, and Winston's 80th birthday is coming up, an age that suggests retirement may not be far off; Gladstone may have become Prime Minister for the fourth and final time at 83, but that's not how things are done in the twentieth century. No; we get modernist artists to do a portrait, and so the episode hangs mainly around Churchill and Graham Sutherland's conversations as Winston sits for his portrait.It's a very character-based episode, filmed largely on location at Chartwell, which gets inside the head of this gruff, eloquent, stubborn and deeply emotional man, suffused with greatness, grief and the black dog.

Churchill's pride is greatly wounded by what must feel like a personal betrayal from his protege, the ambitious and frustrated Sir Anthony Eden, as he delivers an obviously pre-prepared and deeply tactless speech urging Churchill to step down, almost openly accusing him of staying on through nothing but personal pride. The effect is precisely as you would expect.

The unveiling of the painting is the disaster we all know, but the painting has "truth" and is the ultimate catalyst of the wounded Winston at last deciding to step down. We end with scenes of the Queen speaking at a dinner for him juxtaposed with scenes of the painting being burned. The episode is a fine farewell to Churchill whom, I suspect, we shall not see again. But these scenes are also juxtaposed with scenes of Elizabeth and Phil rowing, and I suspect the finale will show a lot more of this...

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 7- Scientia Potentia Est

"No one wants a bluestocking or a college lecturer as Sovereign!"

One of the better episodes, this, making the point that not even all the privilege in the world can save one from 1950s misogyny and stereotyping- and, make no mistake, today is much the same but with the rough edges taken off. Women's rights may have advanced from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic but they are nevertheless in the Stone Age.

Back in little Lillibet's childhood, for example, even after she became heir presumptive, her education consisted solely of the Constitution, Bagehot (So that's how you pronounce the name! I had a similar epiphany with "Lascelles".) and all that. Nothing else. No history, literature, science, philosophy; and yet, her brief expert discourse to the professor hired to tutor her on the finer points of horse racing is clearly meant to imply that Elizabeth, so self-consciously uneducated and intimidated by all these successful and educated men (yes, men) who surround her, is not so much unintelligent as untested.

The other main strand to the episode is, of course, the astounding fact that Churchill had a couple of minor strokes during 1953 and that not only the Press but also the Queen was kept in the dark; no wonder that we Brits have since preferred our leaders to be rather less gerontocratic ever since. Worse, Churchill is only buggering on so that his preferred successor, Eden, can recover from crippling gallstone surgery. And the poor heath of both the prime minister and the foreign secretary is seen, especially by the Eisenhower era Americans, as a metaphor for national decline. Awkward.

We also get a disturbing clash over the choice of his replacement as royal secretary between Elizabeth and the forces of ossified conservatism in the shape of Lascelles; he seems to see anything other than bland, passive conformity as a slippery slope on the way to Abdication. But Elizabeth is clearly no Edward VIII.

We end with Elizabeth giving Churchill a delightful bollocking and Phil, hitherto unseen all episode, turning up as pissed as a fart having spent even more time away from his wife. All is not perfect in that marriage...

Good stuff.

The Crown: Season 1, Episode 2- Hyde Park Corner

"I thought we'd have longer."

This second episode is a superbly crafted piece of drama, significantly better than the last one, entirely concerned with the slow but inexorable demise of George VI, the race to tell Lilibet and Phil- stuck in Kenya many decades before mobile phones- what has happened, and give us our first glimpse of the changes that must happen now that she is Queen Elizabeth II. Earlier this episode Lilibet curtseyed to her grandmother, Queen Mary; now, Mary curtseys to her.

Oh, and I've just realised why I recognise Pip Torrens, who plays Tommy Lascelles; he was Mr Cholmondely-Warner in Harry Enfield and Sons. It was the scene where he speaks sternly to Townsend about what he's up to with Margaret that made me realise. Blimey.

We also get the first of no doubt many scenes of Phil being vaguely racist as the royal couple touch down in Kenya, we get introduced to Churchill's new secretary Venetia, who will no doubt play an important role later on, and we begin to see both how Churchill is slowly losing it (except for big set-piece speeches, of course) and how frustrating this is, despite royal rebukes, for Anthony Eden, perpetual heir to the premiership and the Prince Charles of the 1950s Tory party.

But the episode centres around the urgent yet calm, uneasy yet rehearsed flurry of activity that follows the King's sudden death one morning; we see as the news slowly circulates and plans spring into action. Amongst all that are small character moments, though, with Phil facing down an elephant and Elizabeth showing her war mechanic skills. And there are hats everywhere. Lots of hats.

But there's no denying that this is a very impressive piece of telly. More please.

New Worlds: Episode 4

"I dream of a vast continent, a republic where millions of men live in liberty."

So, New Worlds is over with a whimper, and I notice that, unlike The Devil's Whore, it caused nary a stir at the time and, mere months later, is pretty much forgotten. So what went wrong? Well, it's dull, for a start, with forgettable characters entirely lacking in charisma. And then there's the didacticism. While there's nothing wrong with looking at the past through the eyes of the present- it only exists in those terms, after all- New Worlds goes too far in putting modern sentiments into Restoration mouths.

The Devil's Whore managed to square this circle, looking at the "Good Old Cause" through the eyes of the contemporary Left examining its own heritage. Yet the characters were all of their time. Here we have Whigs expressing modern values, unhistorical attitudes to the Native American genocide, and crude use of dramatic irony in the many hints that the USA is set to exist in ninety years time. Most notably, the concluding bit of text doesn't even mention the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an elephant in the room that demonstrates a crude attempt to avoid a Whig interpretation of history which values the post-1689 constitutional settlement and trying to put a modern Leftist slant on, well, Whigs.

Charles II continues to be an I characteristically miserable bastard, and then dies right on schedule. Abe Gough is tortured, but escapes execution and buggers off to Boston to embark on a career as the authorial voice. Chris Finch from The Office is still around. There is much examination of the fact that Massachusetts is founded on the genocide of local tribes, and conflict with the King's representative that crudely foreshadows the 1770s ("I am here to remind Massachusetts that it is a colony and not a republic"). Hope is a bit racist. Sidney is horribly executed. Beth's mixed race baby is shunned, and reclaimed by it's fatger's moribund tribe. The Monmouth Rebellion happens. Etc. Etc.

This is actually the best of the four episodes, and moderately involving to watch. But by now it's far too late. 

New Worlds: Episode 3

"Our lives will never change until the kings are torn from their thrones."

This episode, we get Native Americans being all noble savages and that in ways that, while trying hard not to be racist in their depiction, may cross the line into patronising as all depictions of tribal societies inevitably do. We also get interesting political discussion which shows us how the die-hard republicans of the Good Old Cause morph slowly into Whigs, keeping an outward show of monarchy but sidelining it to the extent that one Ancien Regime French ambassador once famously refused to accept that England was a monarchy at all after 1688. This is not a Whig script, of course; it is still interested in the history of the Left and not that of Liberals such as myself who are, while way to the left of Clegg and those dangerous Orange Book entryists, are not from that tradition.

Anyway...

Beth survives transportation and meets a sort of proto-Squanto, proceeding to go predictably native and to act as the hand-wringing, post-colonial mouthpiece of our authorial voice. The King proceeds to be a right bastard, and Angelica's house goes to one of a Judge Jeffries' mates who isn't very nice to the staff, allowing us to see a bit of proto-Chartist class conflict. There's a lot of proto-this and proto-that in this somewhat Marxist script. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but I wish the script had put equal attention to giving the characters a little depth. None of them come across as anything more than ideological mouthpieces.

Beth and her new Native American mates soon run up against John Hawkins, Henry Cresswell and their equally genocidal Puritan mates in Massachusetts which, once again, it is instructive to see depicted as the frontier. Abe, meanwhile, gets involved with the Rye House Plot. Ted, now back in Massachusetts, finds his beloved Beth now married to the dastardly Henry Cresswell. And the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts gets a bit of a bollocking on behalf of the King, who is on the Indians' side, sort of. One of the Massachusetts Bastards, incidentally, is Chris Finch from The Office.

Beth's presence in the tribe is discovered, and our RP accented Yankees Hope and Beth resume sleeping together, now a much naughtier thing than it was before. Ned soon becomes outraged at the fact that not only his love rival but also his father are, as William Goffe had put it, "land pirates". Soon enough the tribe is wiped out in a nasty bit of germ warfare. Such is the original sin of America, and it is a very English sin.

The political subtext is entertaining, I suppose, but in the absence of characters in whom one can take an interest it's all there is to grab hold of, and it's not exactly subtle. New Worlds continues to disappoint.

New Worlds: Episode 2

"I cannot marry a man I do not love."

Sigh. Things aren't really picking up. Ned is leaving Boston for England, and Beth is seeing Abe again. Plots are laid to expose Angelica as a traitor and expose her rather dull and understandably circumspect Catholic husband, who cannot deny the "Popish Plot" for fear of accusations, just so the King can seize her land. This is a pity, as Angelica's home is a haven of Whiggery and religious tolerance. Meanwhile, Beth and Abe hope to go to the New World to carry on the Good Old Cause. None of this is presented so as to be at all interesting.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Hope Russell is to be married to a man- Henry Cresswell- whom she neither loves nor likes. And yes, it's still weird to hear all of these Massachusetts Puritans speaking in RP accents. She is, of course, presented with all sorts if arguments to make her feel guilty and submit to this patriarchal and misigynistic pressure. The point here is that it's not only the Tories back in England who are somewhat lacking in progressivism.

Angelica's house is invaded by thugs who light bonfires and chant about the "Popish Plot and praise the Duke of Monmouth. Angelica's hubby, sure enough, is trapped into denying Titus Oates' outrageous claims and arrested. He is now at the mercy of the infamous Judge Jeffries, and both Angelica and Beth are in trouble by proxy. It's all very dramatic, yet somehow still fails to engage.

Poor hubby is tortured, while Abe learns of his fatger's death; he is, it seems, Wiiliam Goff's son. He tries to kill Charles II, whom Jeremy Northam is portraying as a not-at-all merry monarch. He is harboured by Beth and Angelica, and both are subsequently arrested and, on Angelica's case, finally have her luck run out as she is sentenced to be burned at the stake while Beth is transported to America.

Angelica finally dies, watched by her daughter, and gives a magnificent speech; being executed is, after all, a per formative act and, in this case, a political one as she calls Charles a tyrant. Abe, mercifully, shoots her dead before she can suffer, and then seemingly plunges to his own death.

All this is juxtaposed with Charles, looking thoroughly miserable, putting on his crown and dissolving Parliament. He seems triumphant.

New Worlds: Episode 1

"Young Americans like you must seize true liberty."

The Devil's Whore was superlative television. This... isn't, and it's obvious from the start. The cast doesn't sparkle anywhere near as much, there's a lack of unity between the scenes in England and Massachusetts, and the continuing political themes are handled a little more clunky; yes, pre-Glorious Revolution England was no beacon of liberty, but Charles II was not his father, and certainly not the miserable bastard we see here. There a reason why he's known as the Merry Monarch.

We begin in Massachusetts in 1680, a place of Puritan dogma, ethnic cleansing and republican sympathies which extend to harbouring Colonel William Goff, one of the few surviving regicides. Most jarring of all, though, to modern eyes, is the sight of Native American tribes in that long-settled part of New England; the Eastern Seaboard is the frontier. Here we meet Hope and Ned, two strangely RP-accented Americans about whom we are supposed to care, but don't. Indeed, even watching, as I did, with subtitles, it was well into the second episode before I got a clear idea of who the characters were. Characterisation is not this series' strong point.

Our first sight of England is bodies hanging from the Tower of London; lovely. Here we meet an older and much less charismatic Angelica Fanshawe, her grown-up daughter Beth, and her Roman Catholic husband who has been having rather a rough time of it since the so-called Popish Plot two years ago. Beth becomes curious about her father, Edward Sexby, now a conveniently dead legend for republicans and Whigs. Angelica is under pressure to sell her land to the King. This is all set-up and plot but mainly exposition,  with very little spectacle, character or thematic cleverness. The historical characters- James, Duke of York, the Earl of Shaftesbury and the "Protestant Duke"- are made to seem very dull.

William Goff, meanwhile, is on the run from the King's men. He symbolises the transfer of republican ideas from England to America, something dripping with dramatic irony as we know, as he does not, that the English Civil War will have an  American sequel a century hence in which a new republic will be born. Goff is not an unproblematic proto-American, though; shortly before his death he bemoans the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans, the original sin of the United States. Anyway, he is killed, but not before rather predictably inspiring Ned.

Back in  England, Beth is kidnapped on her birthday by Abe, about whom we are also supposed to care. He awakens both her sexuality and her political conscience somewhat, but nothing really happens. The episode ends with nothing but set-up having happened and no real sense of where the series is going.

The Tudors: Season Two, Episode 5

"Mr Cromwell, there really is no difference between us... except that I shall die today, and you shall die tomorrow."

Spoiler: Sir Thomas More dies at the end. Sorry about that.

Everyone at court is all a-flutter about the oath they have to swear, on pain of death, recognising the king's marriage and his religious supremacy. There then follows an episode that examines the concept of integrity under such extreme circumstances: will people stick to their principles if it means a tortuous death? It is still moral to stick to one's principles if, like More, one knows that it will lead to penury for one's entire family? We know not, for we enjoy such things as freedom if speech and freedom of religion. This episode examines the choices open to those who do not enjoy such things. Oh, and More cops it.

Henry will not be moved; More must swear, as has the rest of his family, no doubt under protest, or suffer death by hanging and disembowellment. The scenes between More and his wife, with moral blackmail on both sides, are difficult viewing.

The King's mood is not improved by Anne's miscarriage, Both Catherine of Aragon and Chapuys are left to wonder what will become of them as they, of course, refuse to sign. Pope Clement VII, meanwhile, remains the cynical political operator, who can see the public relations benefits of Bishop Fisher's forthcoming martyrdom, an excellent touch and a welcome bit of black humour.

Power, meanwhile, accrues to Cromwell more and more. Anne is also coming to enjoy the dizzy heights of monarchical power, but is forgetting where she came from, conniving with her father in disowning her pregnant sister Mary Boleyn for the terrible crime of marrying a commoner. Hubris can be terribly unjust.

She should, perhaps, think on the precariousness of her position. We have just seen the king shagging a random woman, and the King could change his mind in a heartbeat, disinheriting Elizabeth in favour of Mary. All live at the harsh caprice of their king.

Fisher's graphic be heading is all the more affecting because of his frankly admitted fear; the bishop has a wobble of faith at the moment of his martyrdom, which is both horrible and deeply ironic. 

The Pope is, as it happens, furious about Fisher's killing. He is more tolerant of Michelangelo's constant swearing, for "We forgive him because he is a genius." There can never be too much praise for the late and much lamented Peter O'Toole.

Henry, self-indulgent and spoiled as only a king can be, feels both guilt and resentment towards More, who has the effrontery to prick the conscience of a King. He reacts childishly, of course, cruelly depriving More of books for his last few days. 

More is, however, magnificent at his show trial, and his condemnation brings forth a sense of joyful freedom; the worst is now happening anyway, and he can now speak his mind and damn the already decided consequences. The king is, at least, kind enough to commute his sentence from hanging, drawing and quartering to the rather less tortuous beheading.

More, respected by the crowd and begged for forgiveness by his own executioner, faces his death with a simple dignity and grace, and we must force ourselves to remember that he, too, persecuted and murdered innocents for their faith. Henry, meanwhile, screams and screams like the petulant little boy he is.

The Tudors: Season Two, Episode 4

"I will recognise no Queen but my mother!"

Events are still fluid and volatile after last episode's violent severing of England's links with Rome, and Henry's court has never seemed a more dangerous place, especially for the former Queen's Catholic supporters. Mary is the most humiliated, forced to wait on her little half-sister Elizabeth and then sleep in humble lodgings, but all those who supported the old faith fear a purge of some sort. And there will be no help from Charles V, who is busily warring with the Habsburgs' perennial enemy, the Ottomans. 

Anne is not happy either; on her father's advice she swiftly gets rid of the king's mistress by framing her for theft, and chooses a mistress of her own choosing whom she can manipulate, who is both a cousin and a good Protestant. This is the reality that early modern kings and queens lived with. Meanwhile, the king pays a visit to Elizabeth but ignores Mary, who watches from a window.

The purge finally arrives, as Cromwell drafts a law forcing all subjects to swear an path recognising both Henry's marriage and his supremacy over the Church. The Pope sees the danger for Fisher, who is swiftly and futilely made a cardinal for his protection. Cromwell then twists the knife by advising the king to dissolve all of the monasteries which refuse to abide by the oath and he agrees, entirely uninfluenced, I'm sure, by the oodles of cash that promise to head his way. As for Fisher, he is sentenced to death for treason. The spotlight now turns to Sir Thomas More; will he swear the oath?

Mary doesn't swear the oath, but she is too royal to die; instead she is forever banished from court. As for More, he tries dissembling, as will many other Catholics facing difficult questions on pain of death during Elizabeth's reign. This eventually fails, and he is left facing the inevitable, without much dignity. But we should perhaps not feel too much sympathy for him; he himself had people burned at the stake for "heresy". However sincere his beliefs, he was a serial killer.

We end with More imprisoned directly above the cell of the condemned Bishop Fisher, looking out if the window to a CGI London landscape and a world wider than the cell he will inhabit for most if the rest if his shirt life...

The Tudors: Season Two, Episode 3

"What harm can a nobody inflict on our Holy Church?"

This is a big, big episode. The fact that this is the break with Rome is signalled by Peter O'Toole's promotion to the credits, and we start with a bang. There's a duel over Anne. The two sides are entrenched. It's all very serious except for Thomas Wyatt who, despite his promotion to the Privy Council, takes nothing seriously.

Catholicism in England is clearly in retreat, with the King promoting arch-Lutheran Thomas Cranmer to the See of Canterbury, but Pope Clement VII remains airily complacent. But soon a surprised Cromwell is appointed Lord Chancellor and, most significantly of all, Henry and Anne are finally married. After all that build-up it's almost an anticlimax.

Catherine is utterly humiliated. But Brandon, it seems, is getting close to her, and siding more firmly with More and Fisher. The English Reformation finally takes off as even this Pope takes steps to excommunicate Henry and he finally breaks with Rome. Cranmer says he's legally married, like a good little lackey (albeit, like Cromwell, one with an agenda), and that's all that matters.

In other subplots, Wyatt carries on a casual affair with one of Catherine's maids. King Francis, quelle surprise, breaks his promises. The Jesuit order is founded. And Anne is pregnant, to excitement all round.

The build-up to Anne's coronation as queen consort leads to an attempted assassination- the people still like the old Queen and the old religion. Fisher and More, who sadly notes that his once-close friendship with Henry is over, snub the ceremony. Anne, as Queen, establishes uber-Protestantism in her household, giving them all a copy of Tyndale's Bible, which is still technically illegal.

One feels most sorry for Mary, no longer a princess and forbidden from all contact with her mother. But this does not quite feel like a total victory for Protestantism in England. For one thing, we get a shot of the King and the new Queen in bed, shot from above, he half-naked and her fully clothed and turned away from him. It seems their relationship, following marriage and pregnancy, may be losing it's ardour. And, given the context, this could potentially have huge political and religious ramifications.

Anne finally gives birth, and it's a girl, and future Virgin Queen. Henry hides his disappointment, but summons a Lady Eleanor to his chamber for sex. Is he beginning to lose his desires for the woman he wanted so desperately for so long? It looks more and more desperately vital that she gives him a male heir, and soon.

The Tudors: Season Two, Episode 2

"Now, my love. Let me conceive, and we will have a son."

A change of style; no longer do we have the "back to the beginning" stuff at the start of the episodes, just one of many small changes from last season. Another is the absence of Henry Czerny. But we are still treading the same water, plot wise, as per the final few episodes of last season.

We begin with some startlingly odd-looking sixteenth century playing cards, some CGI snow, and a discussion about religion in which Thomas Boleyn shows himself to be very, very Protestant. It's Christmas and Henry, being Henry, is delighted by his gift from Anne Boleyn (a rather large boar spear that might cause Sigmund Freud to raise an eyebrow), but rudely rejects the gift from the Queen. Thomas More gives him a silver cross in this last Christmas for England under the Pope; all the presents, predictably, are symbolic.

Christmas is as extravagant as one might expect, but marred by rumours about Anne and Wyatt. The king, freed from Wolsey's influence, nevertheless proposes alliance with France against his Habsburg in-laws. Oh, and the king more or less proposes to Anne while she's wanking him off. Merry Christmas.

This causes some considerable commotion at court, and even Charles Brandon, who avoids nvokving himself on court factionalism, comes out in favour of Catherine, and is subsequently banished from court. Cromwell, as the most Protestant member of the main cast, is making himself unpopular, particularly given his humble origins. Nevertheless, his influence with the King is strong, and Henry is soon declaring that priests' oaths to the Pope contradict their oaths to him. After all these episodes of treading water it looks as though something may now be happening.

In quick succession, Parliament makes Henry supreme governor of the English Church, Henry gracefully accepts More's resignation as Lord Chancellor, Brandon is recalled to court because the King misses his old mate, and Cranmer goes to uber-Protestant Nuremberg and comes back with a wife. Oh, and Anne is made Marchioness of Pembroke, and thus rich.

More retires, in despair, from public life and starts discussing martyrdom with his family, with whom he is touchingly close. Henry gives Anbe the Queen's jewels, while Anne gives him a hand job. Suddenly, it's all happening.

Brandon is now a fully paid up member of the anti-Anne faction ("I grew up"), while Henry is suddenly very friendly with Francis I, who hates the Emperor. He also has a friendly warning for Anne; being a monarch is not easy.

The episode ends by hints of the future as the King and Anne have sex (finally) during a thunderstorm. Symbolism much?

 

The Tudors: Season Two, Episode 1

"The time for Harry is over!"

It's a new season, but everything is in media res. the king's "Great Matter" is hanging over everything and there is much tension. It's now 1532, and we are still living in a very Catholic England. Things have changed, of course, such as the King's facial hair and Peter O'Toole as a splendidly cynical new Pope, but the only issue in town is the King's divorce. 

Behring the scenes, though, Anne Boleyn has increasingly been feeding ever more radically Protestant ideas to the king, ideas which happen to align rather well with his personal desires. On the other hand, Sir Thomas More is more and more outspoken in support of the established church and the Queen. Aligned with him is Bishop Fisher, who also sees any potential break with Rome as heresy.

There has been much commotion in Rome, with the papacy pushed and pulled between Francis I and Charles V, and realpolitik is the order if the day. Charles V remains omnipotent, and Henry is never going to be allowed to divorce his Aunt Catherine by any Pope.

We have new characters- Anne's ambitions and intelligent brother George Boleyn, a coming man; shy and nervous Thomas Cranmer, a Lutheran protege of Cromwell and suddenly the king's personal chaplain; and Mark Smeaton, a good looking violinist and simpleton at court amongst the wolves.

Other marriages are less weighty than the matter of the king's; he is much amused by Charles Brandon marrying his seventeen year old ward, which everyone seems to think is perfectly fine. More seriously, Thomas Wyatt is risking his neck by shagging Anne Boleyn, and Smeaton is playing with fire by publicly flirting with her. 

The atmosphere at court takes a turn for the worse with the attempted poisoning of the court Carholics, and it never really recovers; court is a dangerous place, where one risks random execution for a whiff of power. A lowly cook is arrested, tortured by Cromwell, and killed by being boiled alive, but the crime was masterminded by Thomas Boleyn, who is never implicated. 

There is tension everywhere- between the Queen and Anne Boleyn over who makes the King's shirts; between Henry and More, as the old friends realise they now have nothing in common; and between Henry and the recently evicted Catherine, where things are getting particularly ugly; the King even duffs up the Queen's messenger.

Even more alarmingly, Ambassador Chapuys takes up the Pope's suggestion and hires an assassin to kill Anne Boleyn. Things are slowly getting more and more tense...

The Tudors: Season One, Episode 10

"How many have you burned, Thomas?"

"Six."

And so the season ends, with a dramatic if historically inaccurate end for Wolsey and with harbingers of the massive religious strife that lies ahead in the next season. 

We start with the sexually frustrated King, ahem, masturbating, which is quite a contrast with the long subsequent council meeting scene in which we see him actually, er, kinging. There is a lot of talk, especially from the Duke of Norfolk, about Wolsey, and what he may be up to in York. After all, he may return to power and exact revenge against his persecutors; for the likes of Norfolk, Wolsey must die.

Ironically, while the psychopathic Sir Thomas More is busy torturing and murdering "heretics", the king, under Anbe Boleyn's and Cromwell's influence, is amongst their number. Very much drawn to ideas of kings being the supreme head of religious life in their realms, with no Papal involvement, he has an epiphany: "This book is a book for me, and for all kings!" This does not mean, as we will later learn, that the King will become a full-on Protestant. But it does, as we will later learn, mean that the kingdom will soon be turned upside down.

More is looking less and less sympathetic; the camera lingers on the burning of the "heretic" whom he has put to death. Things are not so simple as his being a tragic figure; we must not forget that his hands are steeped on blood.

The king makes a few more fruitless diplomatic gestures to the Pope and Charles V, but this is utterly pointless. Rumour abounds of an upcoming break with Rome. So it goes for everyone at court. 

There is also the more pragmatic matter of the kingdom's finances, however; as Henry angrily declares, Wolsey was, whatever else he may have been, a competent administrator, and the public finances are in the toilet now he's gone. Could there be a u-turn in the offing? Wolsey's enemies act quickly, led by Norfolk (now more openly Lutheran) and Cromwell, and Wolsey is finally charged with high treason. 

Things seem to be moving in a certain direction; Chapuys leaves court, disgusted at the Protestantism he sees on display there. There are scenes of Wolsey, praying in his cell, juxtaposed with Norfolk and other triumphant Protestants at court. It's a nice sequence of scenes, incorporating a play in which the Roman Catholic Church is mocked in ways which would have recently seemed unthinkable.

Wolsey's final prayer is moving, as he accepts that he will never see heaven. His suicide is not exactly the same as the massive probable stroke which history records, but then I suppose Sam Neill is not so morbidly obese as was the historical Cardinal. 

We end with a symbolic scene which points to the future; Henry and Anne, having sex in a forest. But Anne won't let him climax, and once again he flounces off in frustration...

The Tudors: Season One, Episode 9

"You have destroyed me!"

Events continue on their inevitable path and, for the first time in many episodes, stuff actually happens. Hallelujah.

The Queen is being tried for having apparently consummated her marriage with Arthur. Therefore, it is said, she is not the king's true wife and, having flounced off, she is said to be in contempt of court. She is dignified, defiant, and extremely popular with England 's splendidly bloody-minded people.

Wolsey remains desperate for the divorce to happen, but whatever he does Catherine will still be the daughter of Charles V, who controls the Pope. The Boleyn tribe certainly expect him to fall. And the king's mood is not much improved by a speech in which Catherine's friend Bishop Fisher compares him to Herod.

Wolsey had an interesting chat with Sir Thomas More; he realises that all depends on events on the continent, and is desperate to prevent peace between France and the Empire, something which horrifies the pious and idealistic More. Wolsey fears that Charles may go to war if Henry divorces his aunt.

Tempers are frayed all round, not least between Henry and Campeggio. Henry lectures the Papal Legate on Vatican corruption, and states that perhaps the Lutherans "have a point". This is, then, a rather odd moment for him to be shown composing "Greensleeves"!

Even the trial is a washout: it is all postponed for a final decision at Rome, and has thus been a massive waste of time. Worse than that: it has all been ultimately directed by the Emperor. Relations between Henry and the Papacy are at a low ebb, so much so that Anne Boleyn is able to speak Protestantism to the King, and even gets him to read a book.

Princess Margaret, meanwhile, is sick and dying, and scenes of her on her deathbed are nicely juxtaposed with her husband Brandon shagging another woman. So it goes in the Tudor court. The king is rather displeased at his neglect.

Other news is not good. Charles V sends another Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, who wastes no time in getting pally with the Queen. And peace is finally made between France, the Empire and the Pope. Little England, naturally, is sidelined. There will be no divorce.

This is it for Wolsey, who is made to suffer a thousand small humiliations as he is slowly frozen out. He is dismissed, disgraced, and demoted to Bishop of York. At least he's alive. For now.

We end with Henry appointing his new Lord Chancellor to replace Wolsey- Sir Thomas More, against his consent. Henry assures him that his disagreement with the King over his divorce will not be a problem, but this cannot possibly end well...

At last, some movement. But the second half of this series has been agonisingly slow.

The Tudors: Season One, Episode 8

"God has given me gout as a great trial."

The status quo is as it has been for several episodes, but at least, unlike last episode, stuff happens this time. There is a papal legate, Cardinal Campeggio, who us to finally rule on the king's "great matter". There is no doubt as to the outcome, but at least there is potential for drama.

Wolsey has, unwisely, made assurances to Henry, and is increasingly desperate. He attempts to pressure Campeggio with the risk of England turning Protestant, but it is to no avail. Henry is told, humiliatingly, that until a decision is made he must return to Catherine, for appearances. Ouch.

Henry tries to pressure Catherine to go to  a nunnery, a typical example of the gender double standards at work; unwanted women are expected to go into a convent while the men shag whom they please. Unsurprisingly, the Queen is not keen.

The Reformation is moving into the foreground as Thomas Cromwell makes links with Anne Boleyn while Catherine entrenches her position in confession to Cardinal Campeggio; she insists that she never had any carnal knowledge of the King's late brother Arthur. She will neither go to a convent or divorce Henry.

Elsewhere, pieces are being moved for the season finale. Charles Brandon is back at court with his new wife and failing marriage. Thomas Tallus is having what seems to be a serious relationship with a woman. 

The Queen is rapidly becoming persona non grata at court, but sticks to her guns.  And the King, inevitably, is turning against Wolsey, who has to fall to his knees and beg. There is no pleasant way that this can end. Cromwell is to go to Rome to make vague threats of independence, while Brandon is to investigate Wolsey's French sympathies. It's not looking good.

The Queen is getting chilly with a bishop called Miller; much of the Church supports her. But many don't, and Cromwell's report from his visit to Pope Clement is not positive. 

Wolsey is desperate, desperate enough to get violent with Campeggio. But we all know where this is heading, and because of that it's getting hard to pad out these last few episodes of the season until Wolsey's fall. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and the Boleyns are all conspiring against him by now...

The Tudors, Season One, Episode 7

"And this ointment will comfort your cock if it is sore..."

So, we get a sweating sickness episode. In a sense, this is padding, a means of having the plot tread water for an episode to allow us to get to the end of the season before Wolsey's inevitable downfall. The facts remain the same: Henry wants a divorce. Catherine doesn't. Wolsey is under pressure to get said divorce. Catherine's uncle, Charles V, is the most powerful man in Europe, has Pope Clement by the balls and will never allow said divorce. Irresistible force, meet immovable object.

Wolsey's mates, the French, are at war with said Habsburg dominions, and they and the Genoese besiege the Emperor in Naples. Henry sends a diplomat to Pope Clement, but nothing of substance happens. A papal legate is on his way, but nothing has changed, or will change.

Still, it's interesting seeing the main cast succumb to the plague, one by one. Only Sir William Compton dies (Thomas Tallis observes discreetly), but Henry, Anne Boleyn and Wolsey all survive. Henry's state of mind is much affected, however: why is God punishing his kingdom thus? He still refuses to sleep with Anne in his stubborn piety.

There is, of course, a bit of "Bring out your dead". Which inevitably recalls Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There are hints of the future as Sir Thomas More angrily denounces Lutheranism as a "disease", which has ignited civil war in Germany. But this is, for the first time, an episode in which not enough happens.