The Tudors, Season 2

Jeremy Northam as St. Thomas More

I just finished watching The Tudors, Season 2, which deals with Henry VIII's struggle to marry Anne Boleyn and the disasters which followed. I resisted having anything to do with the Showtime series for a long time but I must say that I am deeply impressed by much of it, especially by how the religious issues are handled. In fact, Season 2 would practically be a martyrology except that it is punctuated by scenes of frantic copulation which detract from an otherwise magnificent production. The sets, the costumes, the music, the banquets, the dances, the firelight are all a history lover's dream. The plot takes into account many intricate diplomatic and political matters which makes the occasional glaring historical errors all the more puzzling. The fact that John Rhys-Meyers' Henry remains muscular and svelte is a bit bizarre but then it probably reflects how Henry saw himself in his increasingly deluded mind. Natalie Dormer is the best Anne Boleyn ever. Katherine of Aragon is shown as the great and holy queen that she was. I sobbed my heart out when she died. The sorrows and humiliations endured by Princess Mary, Henry and Katherine's daughter, are portrayed for the first time in any production that I know of, making the future Mary I a sympathetic, stubborn and tragic character. We see, as never before, Henry VIII overturning heaven and earth in order to make Anne Boleyn his wife and his queen. We witness that jewels, titles, executions and laws of man cannot make a mistress into a wife and that it takes more than a crown to make a queen. Nevertheless, Anne is a mesmerizing personage, played with bewitching grace and subtlety. The scenes of the sufferings and executions of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More are some of the most moving and deeply spiritual depictions I have seen in any drama. It is impossible not to be moved. It is strange that in these times inspiration is found in unlikely places. Share