Blu-ray Movie Reviews

These days, one expects a TV series (or a movie) based on historical characters to fudge with the facts in order to make its topic more viable for modern audiences. Rome thoroughly succeeded in this respect - and what that series did for Cleopatra, The Tudors seems created to do for King Henry VIII. But it isn't nearly as successful. The facts here aren't only distorted, they're made out of whole cloth.

What do we know about the real Henry VIII? For starters, he was a tall, large-framed man. It's true that most of his portraits from later in life portray him as an overweight man gone to seed, but reports of his youthful exploits indicate that he was a good athlete as well as a musician and poet. In this series, he composes "Greensleeves" - which got me thinking about a certain Flanders and Swann skit from their hilarious revue At the Drop of Another Hat, to wit: "Who wrote this? We did. Who are we? We are Henry the Eighth, we are!" They end the bit with "The Royalties Go to Royalty."

A great joke, but there's little royal about Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry in The Tudors. You might say he's hot, sexy, buff, intense, rude, obsessed, cunning, and more. But royal, no. History says that he had a commanding presence that was by all accounts regal. If Henry was a stalwart bulldog, Rhys Meyers plays him as a persistent Jack Russell Terrier. He's less than 6 feet tall, for one thing, and many of the other actors tower over him. He also plays Henry as rather mean. One can have little sympathy for this brash young man. But the most controversial plot against history is having the revered composer Thomas Tallis as a character who wanders through the story. He was indeed a composer in Henry's time, but there are no facts to support that he had any homosexual relationships, as portrayed here.

Meanwhile, Rhys Meyers is surrounded by a group of hunky courtiers who appear anything but medieval. Most of them look like local gym rats or sports heroes who've decided to have a costume party. The older cast members and the women fare better. Sam Neill is thought-provoking as the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, and Natalie Dormer is quite beguiling as a coquettish version of Anne Boleyn. (No, not Natalie Portman. She's in that other Henry gig, the current film of The Other Boleyn Girl.)

The costumes and sets sparkle - and there's the rub. They look like costumes and sets, not clothing and locations. The medieval garb itself seems to be quite neo-Renaissance, and fresh from the cleaners. It's as if these Tudorian homebodies were always ready for a Court Beautiful shoot.

After this drubbing, you might think I absolutely hated The Tudors - but in fact, I loved it for its excesses. And the DVD transfers are fine at conveying the too-good-to-be-true look and less-than-authentic sound of the original show. It's all widescreen, of course, and the picture has deep color, decent contrast, and generally sharp detail. There are times when a scene will go soft in appearance; it's hard to tell if this is intended or a flaw in disc authoring, but the instances aren't frequent, and they don't detract from the overall presentation. The sound is like most TV-on-DVD sound. Once in a while, things happen in the surround channels, but usually all the sonics are up front. Dialogue is almost entirely in the center channel, and it's pretty easy to understand, except when some of the thick British accents get going at a rapid rate.

Two of the featurettes - apologies for the design and costumes looking a bit more modern than they might - are fluff. But the third is a very enthusiastic, 20-minute tour of the remaining favorite Tudor locations, and it's exhilarating and fun (while passing along some good historical information). Not wanting to waste space on the fourth disc, which has just the final episode of the season, Showtime has included free complete episodes of . . . Californication, This American Life, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (! indeed). For more info on Henry that will put you back on history's straight and narrow, you'll have to Google him. And when you do, and see what a fascinating life he and his friends lived, you might well ask why the producers of this show had to gussy things up quite so much. Oh, yes. Ratings.

By the way, in case you're curious about what happens during Season 1: It takes us to the point where Cardinal Wolsey is driven out of Henry's court for failing to get the King's marriage to Queen Catherine annulled. No women are beheaded. But we know what history has in store for Season 2 (beginning March 30). Can that be why the cover of this DVD set shows a seated, petulant Henry, sleeves rolled up and oozing sex appeal, with three buxom ladies who have been cut off by the photographer at the neck? We only see their bosoms, not their faces.

Stay tuned. The Tudors is a train wreck of a soap opera that could become addictive.

more Entertainment reviews Back to Homepage What's New on S&V