I love this time period in history, and getting caught up in it for a day was a blast. The series builds on the first, of course, beginning with Henry VIII having himself proclaimed head of the Church in England, and continuing on up until Ann Boleyn’s beheading and Henry’s intention to marry Jane Seymour. I felt this series came off better than the first series, which in a way is mainly set-up in anticipation of this season’s pay off. I can see why some people got so bored with the first series if they weren’t particularly interested in Tudor history already; a lot of it was planning and conspiring and manuevering people into position. What the first series did have that this one didn’t was Sam Neill’s surprisingly humane and delicate performance as Cardinal Wolsey. This season’s champion for me was Jeremy Northam as an intense but decent Sir Thomas More.

That’s another aspect of the show I enjoy; the idea that Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s cold, oddly charming King Henry stands apart from humanity, and everyone around him remains just a little bit afraid of him for it. Like a caged lion who expects to be worshiped and loved, Henry’s attention is capricious and totally self-serving. Which Natalie Dormer’s Anne knows how to manipulate; Dormer has been sexy as hell on this show and in this series we get to see her go from last season’s cunning, devious, mildly slutty vixen to full-on queen to obsessive, smashed up, and paranoid. And she’s very good through it all.

The Tudors is the creation of Michael Hirst, the same writer behind Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I like that he takes some chances here with history, offering some alternate theories about some of the events that occur. The theory about the death of Katherine of Aragon is especially intruiging. I don’t know the ultimate fate of this show, if this was as far as it was meant to go or not, but I would love to see this series continue through the rest of Henry’s marriages, and even into Mary and Elizabeth if there’s a mind to.

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