Media Review – ‘The Tudors’ Series 1

Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Natalie Dormer, Sam Neill, and Maria Doyle Kennedy

There was a lot of love when I suggested the idea on Instagram that, as I was rewatching Showtime’s ‘The Tudors’ perhaps I did a little review of each season. ‘The Tudors’ is a show that seems to be a lot of people’s gateway into studying the Tudors, including me. The show started being broadcast in 2007 in the UK when I was nearly 17 years old and studying history at sixth form, doing a module on Tudor Rebellions. It was these combined that led to me choosing History rather than English Literature as my undergraduate degree.

'The Tudors' starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII, Maria Doyle Kennedy as Katherine of Aragon, Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, Annabelle Wallis as Jane Seymour, Joss Stone as Anne of Cleves, Tamzin Merchant as Katherine Howard, and Joely Richardson as Katherine Parr (2007-2010).

First broadcast: 2007

Starring: Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII, Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey, Maria Doyle Kennedy as Katherine of Aragon, Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon, Jeremy Northam as Thomas More, Nick Dunning as Thomas Boleyn, and Henry Czerny as the Duke of Norfolk.

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The chronology of ‘The Tudors’ is a little mixed up. The show starts in around 1518. Katherine of Aragon has been pregnant and miscarried for the final time at this point. Henry VIII is around age 27 while Katherine is around 33, though she looks much older in the show. Their daughter, Mary, would be about 2 years old. Henry VIII wants to go to war with France though Cardinal Wolsey is working instead for a peace. The show starts with an assassination – allegedly that of Henry VIII’s uncle, the ambassador to Urbino. Henry VIII only had one uncle, Arthur, Viscount Lisle, who was an illegitimate son of Edward IV, and he was not assassinated in 1518, actually living until 1542. But this is used as the impetus for war with France, without having to explain all of the international politics and complex relationships that actually led to war.

The second episode is the most confusing in terms of chronology as we have the Field of the Cloth of Gold event which takes place in 1520 where Henry VIII and Francis I of France meet to ratify a peace treaty. After this, we then see the king’s mistress Bessie Blount, give birth to his son, Henry Fitzroy, though this actually took place in 1519. We see Henry already seeming to question the validity of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, though we know that no action was taken to begin investigating until 1526, though timelines are often condensed down to make the drama move at a better pace for watching audiences and if you didn’t know the history intimately, as I didn’t when I first watched it, then it works.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII in Showtime’s ‘The Tudors’ (2007).

One of the weirdest things about ‘The Tudors’, though, is the amalgamation of Henry VIII’s two sisters, Mary and Margaret, into just one, Margaret, who largely seems to have Mary’s life. In real life, Margaret Tudor married James IV of Scotland in 1503, and had already been widowed and remarried to Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, by the time our story starts in ‘The Tudors’. Mary Tudor married Louis XII of France in 1514, being widowed just a few months later at the beginning of 1515 and almost immediately remarrying to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. In Showtime’s ‘The Tudors’ we hear nothing about the Scots queen, Margaret Tudor, and we instead have Margaret Tudor preparing to marry the King of Portugal around 1521, who is killed by Margaret, who then marries Charles Brandon. I guess Margaret couldn’t marry the French king in the show because the French king is Francis I who is already married, so a compromise had to be found to still show her story, even though the events in reality happened years earlier. I also doubt that Mary Tudor actually killed her royal husband, but it adds drama!

Of course, you can’t discuss ‘The Tudors’ series 1 or 2 without discussing Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII. I remember reading, when the show first came out, that Jonathan Rhys Meyers was too handsome to play Henry VIII. However, Henry wasn’t always the corpulent, obese, and ill man that he is often portrayed as. In his youth, he was said to be one of the handsomest men in Christendom, and I like that we get to see this in ‘The Tudors’ – handsome, athletic, and charismatic. Rhys Meyers has real presence on screen as his moods, wants, and desires change, and you start to see the tyrannical and cruel man the king would more overtly become coming through.

Natalie Dormer is a beautiful woman, and, like Rhys Meyers, she has real charisma and presence on screen. The pair have a wonderful chemistry. I am glad they kept Anne dark-haired in the show as I read somewhere that they wanted Anne to be blonde, but that Dormer pushed back. Anne likely wasn’t blonde or dark, but possibly more like an auburn hair. I think blonde would have been too stereotypical of the other woman, which is often seen on screen. But Anne was also said to not be particularly beautiful, that her charms for the king were in her wit and intelligence, which we see spades of in Dormer’s performance.

Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn in Showtime’s ‘The Tudors’ (2007).

As the series progresses and we see the ‘Great Matter’ come to the forefront, we get more and more of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn together as Thomas Wolsey gets pushed out. Whether there was an overt plot to get rid of Wolsey as we see in ‘The Tudors’ is unclear, though it works well in terms of the drama playing out on screen. Sam Neill as Thomas Wolsey plays between confidence and fear really well, overbearing at times and acknowledging what you have to do to keep a king’s favour – give up the thing you most care about. Maria Doyle Kennedy as Katherine of Aragon gives a beautiful performance showing Katherine’s strength and stubbornness and I was really glad that we got to see her speech at the legatine court – one of her most defining moments.

The first series of ‘The Tudors’ covers from around 1518 to 1530, so quite a long period with a lot going on, but I think the show manages well to deal with the complexities generally, while keeping the action moving. It is certainly one of my guilty pleasures and one I return to when I’m feeling down and need something I enjoy. The acting is really good, though I do have problems with some of the characterisations, like Thomas Boleyn pushing one daughter then another into the king’s bed and, later on, Jane Boleyn condemning her husband and sister-in-law and then helping Katherine Howard commit adultery. These are popular tropes but without any real evidence to back them up, and they damage the perceptions of the real historical figures. But, as with most dramas, ‘The Tudors’ needs to be taken with a pinch of salt and I’m not ashamed to say I love it!

You can read an earlier post on my blog from way back in 2015 where I point out some of the inaccuracies in ‘The Tudors’ series 1 here.