Henry VIII

Good lord - the instant I saw Helena Bonham Carter appear as Anne in the first episode, I thought two things: one, she is definitely looking her "nearly forty" age, and two, she's at least four months pregnant! No one could miss her dress sticking out to *there* even if they tried, despite the voluminous material.

I knew it wasn't my imagination when I found this in her biography:

"Delivered her first child, a boy, Billy Ray, with boyfriend Tim Burton on October 6, 2003"

That would have been just after shooting Henry VIII. I've enjoyed Carter's work over the years, but still - there are a zillion terrific English actresses who could have done (and looked!) the part equally as well.

Bodice-Ripper Mentality

Henry as played by Ray Winstone is a brawling, bawling, beastly Bluebeard. I realize Henry VIII was a spoiled brat of a king, reigning at the time when being an absolute monarch meant something, but the Tudors were also craftily intelligent. This Henry just appears to be a demanding brute. There is very little attempt to portray his intelligence or his charm. He may have been king (and it's good to be king), but when he wanted to Henry could be charming. It doesn't come through here. The history itself is a bit screwy. Let's call it history lite. There is a bodice-ripper mentality to the writing. Let's get into the hairshirt with Katherine of Aragon or the sex with Anne Boleyn. Let's show brutal war at its most brutal. Yes, war really is horrid and the Renaissance Europe was a cruel place, but the feeling of this piece is not the historical value of violence and sex, but rather for their voyeuristic quality. It's a bit smarmy. The acting was melodramatic, relieved only by good performances by Charles Dance and Sean Bean and their characters die fairly quickly. This was 3 unpleasant hours that I don't want to repeat again. Classic classy British fair, NOT.

This BBC two-parter tells the story of Henry VIII and casts Ray Winstone in the titular role. Winstone, a much-mocked actor, seems to have a legion of detractors but I found him perfect in this part, playing a surprisingly emotional and unstable monarch.

Given Henry's status as England's most famous king, the story is very familiar but that doesn't stop HENRY VIII from being a highly entertaining interpretation of the story. Of course, the pacing is super-fast seeing as six wives and all manner of political turmoil is compressed into just three hours, but it still has time to get all the important stuff in there.

The budget seems higher than the Hollywood version of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL (maybe because money wasn't blown on needless 'star' names) with close attention to detail both in set and costume. The cast is simply excellent - not just in the supporting male characters (Mark Strong and Danny Webb are great bad guys, Charles Dance and Sean Bean are brief and tragic figures, David Suchet makes Wolsey his own) but particularly in the actresses playing Henry's wives.

Of course, Helena Bonham Carter bags the headlining role of Anne Boleyn, and very good she is too. But Emilia Fox (as Jane Seymour) and an impossibly young Emily Blunt (as Catherine Howard) also deserve plaudits for their acting skills. Is this better than the Keith Michell version? No, but I'd say it was equally as good and a fittingly violent interpretation for our times.

I second most of the comments already made about the historical inaccuracy of this program, but want to add yet another quibble: the scenes that purport to show the dissolution of the monasteries. What a bunch of hooey! I thought I was watching a scene from some movie of the Vikings raiding and pillaging the English coast. What actually happened was that inspectors were sent around and anything of value was methodically stripped and either taken for the royal treasury or sold; the monasteries were then pulled down, bells were melted, etc.; the monks and nuns were given pensions. It's true that servants were turned off without work, causing hardship; it's also true that those who were especially obdurate were tried and executed, but the slashing swords and burning monks fleeing from buildings were complete inventions of the filmmakers.

I just don't see the point--fiction is the name for this (not even historical fiction--just fiction).

Like the film 'Elizabeth' the factual content of this film was very slim. Unlike Elizabeth it had no compensating qualities. It gave virtually no insight to the character of Henry or any of his wives, from the opening scenes where the Duke of Buckingham apparently survived his execution in 1513 to appear as a crusader for Catherine of Aragon 15 years later, to the death bed scene where Henry's family (who were actually celebrating New Year miles away) are clustered round his bed to hear his dying words. Jane gets knocked about and Henry hides round the corner during Anne Boleyn's trial-Complete nonsense! historically, once Henry had decided to lose a wife, he avoided all contact and blamed everyone else for their treatment. What is odd is that the directors chose to invent completely spurious scenes to illustrate Henry's crimes when there were plenty of real incidents which would have provided more than enough spectacle. I appreciate that Henry's court of more than 1000 people, glittering with excessive layers of sumptuous cloth and huge jewels could not be managed on a TV budget- but this Henry spent half his time in empty buildings talking to his echo, something impossible in the Tudor Court where even the King going to the toilet was surrounded by hereditary attendants. So, setting aside accuracy, we are left with the casting of Ray Winstone. Not impossible that Henry might have cracked coarse jokes, had a cockney accent and been free with his hands. Before he became a human boulder, he was also athletic, obsessed with doing all of those sports his father, fearful for the life of the only surviving son, had forbidden. But what happened to the literate defender of the faith? The king who owned dozens of pairs of reading glasses, who played a range of musical instruments and sang every day, who enjoyed disguising and dancing, who spent hours in disputes with intellectuals about faith? This film's Henry was like a soap opera character- a renaissance Dirty Den. Two dimensional and unbelievable. It was the choice to rely on spectacle rather than knowledge, assuming the audience to be dummies, incapable of following a plot, that sank this film. Another film which would not manage a release in cinema and will, I guess, be forgotten!