The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family

After Channel five's abomination of The Anne Boleyn story, I was expecting great things from this BBC drama documentary.

All in all, it's pretty good, it's very practical, very informative, it provides you with lots of facts, and historically accurate information about the whole of the family, in particular the rise and fall of Anne.

I loved the accuracy of the info, I was less than impressed by the drama elements, at times it looked a little bit cheap, The BBC are renowned for their costume dramas, but this unfortunately doesn't cut the mustard.

Watchable, informative, just wanted a bit more from it, 6/10.

Excellent series about a family at the very heart of the English Reformation.

It is not about the drama, it is about the commentary.

Experts include Oxford's finest, the excellent Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of church history.

What's with the people putting down this show? Okay, they filmed it at the proper location(s), they probably found the actors who looked (sort of) like the real persons. Okay, so they added some juicy stuff to it (to make it more interesting). The truth is, everyone who rated this show so badly could not have personally have done half as good as this.

The experts who were interviewed seemed to know what they were talking about. Half of them I am sure live at those locations, too (too spooky for me though), but it's like being a fly on the wall, and to witness these people, makes a very interesting story.

Have seen it more than once, and I find it very enjoyable!

Because the propagandists at the BBC were more interested in putting women in front of the camera than they were in creating an informative program, we get this kind of dreck.

To disguise the amateurish opinions expressed by the "experts", we're treated to another overly dramatic, overly long costume drama. Shiny, color objects dangled in front of our eyes and ears to make us think we're watching something of substance, when all we're really watching is a political agenda.

There was a brief mention in Episode 3 alluding to Anne's role in the Reformation. In fact, it wouldn't have happened as it did were it not for her efforts. I can imagine someone thought of the "scandalous" title and decided to write the series around it. The Boleyns were no more or less ambitious than a cartload of others such as the Seymours, but Anne is presented as a schemer and a seducer, if not in fact an adulteress. The script managed to suggest that the reason for her downfall was going too far in flirtation. For those interested in the actual history, the biography by Eric Ives, "The Life and Death of Anne Bolyn" is definitive. Others have commented on problems with the costumes, hairstyles, acting, commentaries, etc., but for me the great failure is the lack of understanding why Thomas More set out to destroy her and why Henry, the absolute monster, had her head cut off. On the positive side, the actress portraying Anne did a nice job of suggestng her charm.