The Tudors: Season Four, Episode 3

"Without knowledge, life will not be worth living."

It`s about time it was said; Henry is getting fatter, yes, but not fat enough for verismilitude. Television needs a Henry with sex appeal and brooding good looks. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is superb, but he`s not natural casting for a dirty old man. And he is old, by the standards of 1541; in a nicely judged scene we see him looking rather satisfied at having "cured" some peasants of the "King`s Evil", and the next moment being disgusted at the reminder of his own mortality.

Catherine has slept with Culpeper and is irreversibly on the path to her doom, but the episode is no more pregnant with foreboding than Catherine is pregnant with Henry`s child, and she s too simple to see it. She and the King have little in common besides sex anyway; Henry discusses Tactus with little Elizabeth, but he certainly can`t do that with Catherine. In fact, he comes increasingly to rely on Anne of Cleves, of all people, for companionship, the only person who will not let him win at cards and a good de facto mother to his two intelligent daughters. He respects her. And it`s implied he sleeps with her. I suspect the sex would have been less wild but rather more fulfilling. This is not good for Catherine, but then she and Henry could never have been soulmates.

The increasingly unlikeable and badly acted Earl of Surrey gets made a Knight of the Garter, and then proceeds to get rat-arsed in a tavern, making bawdy jokes and giving away an expensive ring to a peasant barmaid. The Garter means nothing to one so posh as him, both an intellectual and social snob to whom such honours are an expected family possession.

The King heads through the recently harrowed north on his way north to parley with James V, King of Scots. We get to see what an awesome sight a travelling king is to passing peasants, while Seymour, in charge at London, investigates Surrey. Meanwhile, the affair between Catherine and Culpeper gets increasingly reckless...

The Tudors: Season Four, Episode 2

"I have formed a sinister opinion that most of you are liars and flatterers...!"

And the King was in such a good mood last episode...

Anne of Cleves may be divorced from Henry but she still dines regularly with the King's two daughters and, oddly, gets on well with Mary in spite of their religious differences. She is innocent, nice, discreet and possesses all the qualities needed to help her to keep her head. This is a good thing; Henry is in a foul mood. Cromwell's execution means that there is no longer a chief minister and he has to actually do some work for a change. 

The Scots are getting restive as James V, who hasn't yet stepped in front of that cannon, plans to invade. Henry has problems, so it's good for the kingdom, I suppose, that he gets to release tension in some very hard sex with Catherine. Unfortunately for Catherine, her past sexual escapades are slowly coming back to bite her, and she isn't anywhere near bright enough to know how to handle this. Meanwhile, there are hints that the Duke of Surrey may be a secret Protestant. All this intrigue reminds me of the first season.

It's New Year 1541 and Anne of Cleves, incredibly, is invited to court and even embraced by the King, much to the dislike of his spoiled and hubristic new wife. Everyone else likes her, however. It's clear that Catherine is not actually liked by anyone but the King, and is largely seen, in rather misogynistic terms, as a whore.

The King, though, is not well; his old would from five years ago has turned gangrenous. This doesn't help his moods as Catherine and Mary clash, with Mary furiously leaving court without permission.

At least the campaign against the Scots has been successful. But storm clouds are gathering. Plots arise for the horrible Culpeper to bed Catherine, while Henry's would gets worse and worse, leading to questions over his survival that infuriate him and lead to a furious outburst before his ministers. He is beginning to regret to executions of competent ministers such as Wolsey, More and Cromwell.

Culpeper's ludt for Cathetrine is cruelly manipulated by Lady Rochford, surely plotting the death of this poor, thick young girl. This is an episode of plot threads being put into position before storm clouds furiously break. The air is charged with tension...

The Tudors: Season Three, Episode 8

"I think she looks fit for a king..."

Poor Cromwell. He`s a bastard, but nobody deservs that.

This is a dramatic episode, in which Cromwell suffers his gruesome death, Anne of Cleves gets both promoted to the opening credits and divorced, and the King meets the young Catherine Howard. It`s quite a finale.

We start with the King desperate to get out of his marriage; Cromwell is under a lot of pressure. We also have the bizarre prospect of a budding romance between the uber-Catholic Princess Mary and Anne`s equally Lutheran cousin, Philip of Bavaria. She begins to fall in love with him, and then the King sends him away; his association with his cousin makes him persona non grata. It`s begining to look as though poor Mary will die a frustrated spinster.

Sexual frustration is not something a king has to put up with, and so he duly gets Sir Francis Bryan to scour his mother`s aristocratic orphanage for a bit of posh totty. They come up with the pretty, rather dim and disturbingly young Catherine Howard who is "a little wild". Lucky girl. The King is, unmistakeably,  a dirty old man. Scenes of their "courtship" are juxtaposed with the rather more meaningful courtship between Mary and Philip. Inevitably, naked bodies intertwine. How, er, romantic.

 We first realise that Cromwell is doomed when the King gives him a vote of confidence. Shortly thereafter the King is told by Brandon (with whom he is close these days) that the French want him removed. At the following council meeting the friendless Cromwell is arrested for treason, and there follows nothing but horror. Even the slimy Richard Rich turns against him.

His lack of popularity comes back to bite him as Brandon and Edward Seymour conspire to get his executioner drunk the night before. His execution takes place before a braying crowd, in humiliating scenes which are juxtaposed with scenes of Anne of Cleves being told her marriage is annulled. We then see Cromwell`s botched and tortuous execution as the dissolute Henry emptily shags his teenage lover in a huge folly of a palace...

The Tudors: Season Three, Episode 7

"My country is not a brothel, and my sister is not a whore."

We are once again reminded of England`s, and Henry`s, low status on the European stage, as invasion is feared from both France and the Habsburg lands. Preparations are made for the kingdom`s defence; even Scotland seems set to join in. However, a bloke with a spyglass (many decades before Galileo...) reports that the armada in the channel seems to be heading for Spain. Phew.

The crisis is over. Chapuys is back at court. Francis still hates Charles V, to the point of allying with the Ottomans against him. England is a second rate power, a piggy in the middle. Its diplomatic ambitions, handled by an increasingly desperate Cromwell, are limited to finding a pretty wife for the king from mighty Cleves, a tiny little speck on a map of the Holy Roman Empire. Maps of the Holy Roman Empire are terrifying things. Cleves is not, and its Duke William is portrayed as a comedy character, indeed the only real comic relief in an ominous episode.

 Sir Francis Bryan is continuing his counter-espionage against Cardinal Pole, whie Charles Brandon and Edward Seymour (now Earl of Hertford) attempt a rapprochement; can their mutual loathing for Cromwell draw them together? Both are keen for the marriage to go wrong,

Anne of Cleves reaches Calais, and has a perceptive comment: "I do not know what to make of the King. He burns one Lutheran, and then marries another?" She is, for the moment, veiled, to maximise suspense. Brandon is teaching her how to play piquet as we once again get a look at those sixteenth century playing cards. The King, meanwhile, is feeling the sexual excitement of being about to possess utterly a complete stranger.

And then we see Anne`s face, and she`s Joss Stone. As with many singers turned actors she does a good job with the part, although it must have been insulting to be asked to play the ugly one. Especially as the King`s first words after her unveiling are "I like her not". He goes on to say that she looks like "a horse, a Flanders mare". For the record, I think Joss Stone is quite pretty.

Henry is disappointed, and soon rounds on Cromwell. It`s going to get worse, too; he isn`t getting any sex. The final scene is of Henry masturbatingn bed while his humiliated wife lies silently beside him.