'Tudors' joins the old and the ribald
March 29, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Young Henry doesn't bother to remove a waistcloth while presenting his loins and abs of steel to a salacious young mistress. Here in Henry's kingdom by the sea, heads roll; gallantry's on the guillotine. But his passion, in Showtime's "The Tudors," is to put chambermaids and daughters of advisers on their backs and knees. It's good to be the king.
Clearly, this is not the aged Henry VIII of turkey legs and puffy museum portraits. This is Dorian Gray Henry, spoiled by blood and impetuous lust. Someday his bloated portrait will reveal the wrinkles of hedonism. But while it lasts, hedonism is happy fun times.
Thin and playful, the king volleys tennis balls well and never loses at jousting. (Who'd brave execution to plow his lord with a pole?) Sweaty from sport, Henry drips debauchery.
Sex, sex, sex. "The Tudors" implicitly rubs history the right way. The trouble with laced-up, old history stories is we regard them as if they wear chastity belts and aspire to be in Shakespeare's tragedies, which themselves were violent and sensationalistic departures from moral plays during the bard's generation.
Funny how it takes not PBS but cable TV's most expensive pay-cable channels to address bygone eras -- in HBO's just-wrapped "Rome" and now Showtime's "Tudors" -- with narrative texts and tones, more grisly and nuder than what you see in high school classrooms.
In a recent "Rome," a soldier of high rank entered the orgy quarters of a rival peer and didn't deign to glance at enslaved prostitutes being raped at hand. As the two officers conducted business, one unclothed woman wept cautiously on her captor's lap as he forced plum pieces into her quivering mouth.
In "The Tudors," sex is shared mostly among nobles. So it's basically consensual. (Hark, the progress between B.C. Rome and 16th century England.)
Sex isn't always pretty in "The Tudors." Men who operate Henry's court -- not including the Catholic cardinal, who has a wife and children -- merrily send their daughters to Henry's bedchambers in exchange for good tidings.
One of Henry's prey is Mary Boleyn (sister of Anne/ mother of Elizabeth I), who is offered to Henry by her own power-tripped father. Henry gazes at Mary after a long, hard day and asks sweetly, "You've been at the French court for two years. Tell me, what French graces have you learned?"
Henry finds only practical use for his own daughter Mary (the future Queen Mary I). As a little girl, she stands near a castle window while Henry, thinking politically, offers her tiny hand in marriage to Charles V (already the king of Spain and the Holy Roman emperor).
Charles, with his giant chin, squats to smile at the clueless child. "Bravo," he approves and tenderly kisses her cheeks.
Yes, you are correct. This is pretty disgusting behavior among white-white men who ruled the world, saved our language and are considered "great men," while at their feet fell female footnotes, not counting Queen Mary, Elizabeth and a few other noir heroines and scapegoats. (At least the Europeans elevated women rulers).
HBO and Showtime's devilishly detailed treatments of grand histories may be fictional and occasionally farfetched, but even compared to many movie period pieces, they try to give viewers a grittier notion of the daily grind of relatively horrific times.
This is precisely why television critics so often prefer such Deep Cable. It's not soaped up and sanitized for parental and political relief. It is ornate and musky, and not incidentally quite lucrative for the networks.
Complain about the state of entertainment if you will, but the business of American TV is business, and if you follow the money, you'll see not only that breasts and blood sell, but so does intellectual curiosity. Have you listened to the language in "Rome"? It's college-level dialogue, spilling forth from naked actresses and men in tights.
The qualitative difference between "Rome" and "The Tudors" is significant, however. Two seasons of "Rome" cost $100 million to make, supposedly, and it shows in its magnificent and bold breadth. The tighter budget of the 10-part "Tudors" produces smaller sets and less inspired cinematography.
In fact, "The Tudors" suffers from being merely capable on most fronts, a decent diversion. The direction is effective but artistically flat, and so are several scripts.
Good fortune comes primarily from an intense and blunt portrayal of Henry (by Irish actor and Versace "face" Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and a sensible, humanistic depiction of Henry's mentor Sir Thomas More (British-born Jeremy Northam).
It's hard not to spot another comparison between "Rome" and "Tudors": violence of religion. In "Rome," people pray to gods named Forculus and such; they bathe in sacrificial animal blood. In "The Tudors," Jesus is the reason for the season of war, at times. The Church. The Pope. Pending Protestantism. Jesus is love? Blood spills just the same.
All the salacious slithering comes with a legitimate thematic thread. Lust helps the king rein his aggression and think less hotheaded. (But of course. Why would a man want to grip power if he can't get no satisfaction?)
History records Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Sam Neill) may have encouraged Henry's libidinous appetite to get on his good side. But as "The Tudors" sews this, Henry chills out when he exerts energy with women. Romps slightly temper his thirst for war with French whiners.
The bumper-sticker bottom line: Calm heads of state prefer sex to war -- at the expense of women under them. No matter how much supporting evidence you provide (Hitler's questionable sex drive; peacenik Jimmy Carter's Playboy libido; etc.), you may not find that theory in a deferential textbook. But it's spread all over HBO and Showtime.
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Young Henry doesn't bother to remove a waistcloth while presenting his loins and abs of steel to a salacious young mistress. Here in Henry's kingdom by the sea, heads roll; gallantry's on the guillotine. But his passion, in Showtime's "The Tudors," is to put chambermaids and daughters of advisers on their backs and knees. It's good to be the king.
Clearly, this is not the aged Henry VIII of turkey legs and puffy museum portraits. This is Dorian Gray Henry, spoiled by blood and impetuous lust. Someday his bloated portrait will reveal the wrinkles of hedonism. But while it lasts, hedonism is happy fun times.
Thin and playful, the king volleys tennis balls well and never loses at jousting. (Who'd brave execution to plow his lord with a pole?) Sweaty from sport, Henry drips debauchery.
Sex, sex, sex. "The Tudors" implicitly rubs history the right way. The trouble with laced-up, old history stories is we regard them as if they wear chastity belts and aspire to be in Shakespeare's tragedies, which themselves were violent and sensationalistic departures from moral plays during the bard's generation.
Funny how it takes not PBS but cable TV's most expensive pay-cable channels to address bygone eras -- in HBO's just-wrapped "Rome" and now Showtime's "Tudors" -- with narrative texts and tones, more grisly and nuder than what you see in high school classrooms.
In a recent "Rome," a soldier of high rank entered the orgy quarters of a rival peer and didn't deign to glance at enslaved prostitutes being raped at hand. As the two officers conducted business, one unclothed woman wept cautiously on her captor's lap as he forced plum pieces into her quivering mouth.
In "The Tudors," sex is shared mostly among nobles. So it's basically consensual. (Hark, the progress between B.C. Rome and 16th century England.)
Sex isn't always pretty in "The Tudors." Men who operate Henry's court -- not including the Catholic cardinal, who has a wife and children -- merrily send their daughters to Henry's bedchambers in exchange for good tidings.
One of Henry's prey is Mary Boleyn (sister of Anne/ mother of Elizabeth I), who is offered to Henry by her own power-tripped father. Henry gazes at Mary after a long, hard day and asks sweetly, "You've been at the French court for two years. Tell me, what French graces have you learned?"
Henry finds only practical use for his own daughter Mary (the future Queen Mary I). As a little girl, she stands near a castle window while Henry, thinking politically, offers her tiny hand in marriage to Charles V (already the king of Spain and the Holy Roman emperor).
Charles, with his giant chin, squats to smile at the clueless child. "Bravo," he approves and tenderly kisses her cheeks.
Yes, you are correct. This is pretty disgusting behavior among white-white men who ruled the world, saved our language and are considered "great men," while at their feet fell female footnotes, not counting Queen Mary, Elizabeth and a few other noir heroines and scapegoats. (At least the Europeans elevated women rulers).
HBO and Showtime's devilishly detailed treatments of grand histories may be fictional and occasionally farfetched, but even compared to many movie period pieces, they try to give viewers a grittier notion of the daily grind of relatively horrific times.
This is precisely why television critics so often prefer such Deep Cable. It's not soaped up and sanitized for parental and political relief. It is ornate and musky, and not incidentally quite lucrative for the networks.
Complain about the state of entertainment if you will, but the business of American TV is business, and if you follow the money, you'll see not only that breasts and blood sell, but so does intellectual curiosity. Have you listened to the language in "Rome"? It's college-level dialogue, spilling forth from naked actresses and men in tights.
The qualitative difference between "Rome" and "The Tudors" is significant, however. Two seasons of "Rome" cost $100 million to make, supposedly, and it shows in its magnificent and bold breadth. The tighter budget of the 10-part "Tudors" produces smaller sets and less inspired cinematography.
In fact, "The Tudors" suffers from being merely capable on most fronts, a decent diversion. The direction is effective but artistically flat, and so are several scripts.
Good fortune comes primarily from an intense and blunt portrayal of Henry (by Irish actor and Versace "face" Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and a sensible, humanistic depiction of Henry's mentor Sir Thomas More (British-born Jeremy Northam).
It's hard not to spot another comparison between "Rome" and "Tudors": violence of religion. In "Rome," people pray to gods named Forculus and such; they bathe in sacrificial animal blood. In "The Tudors," Jesus is the reason for the season of war, at times. The Church. The Pope. Pending Protestantism. Jesus is love? Blood spills just the same.
All the salacious slithering comes with a legitimate thematic thread. Lust helps the king rein his aggression and think less hotheaded. (But of course. Why would a man want to grip power if he can't get no satisfaction?)
History records Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Sam Neill) may have encouraged Henry's libidinous appetite to get on his good side. But as "The Tudors" sews this, Henry chills out when he exerts energy with women. Romps slightly temper his thirst for war with French whiners.
The bumper-sticker bottom line: Calm heads of state prefer sex to war -- at the expense of women under them. No matter how much supporting evidence you provide (Hitler's questionable sex drive; peacenik Jimmy Carter's Playboy libido; etc.), you may not find that theory in a deferential textbook. But it's spread all over HBO and Showtime.
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