The Cruel Beauty of Showtime’s “The Tudors”

Showtime’s most successful costume drama exposes the dark and sexy side of history.

I remember when I first watched The Tudors. It was in 2007, right after the show began airing on Showtime, and my parents had received a special free preview of the network. I began watching the show, and I immediately fell under its spell. There was something that was utterly captivating about the way that it conjured up the dark, seductive, sexy world of Henry VIII’s court. Here were all of the characters that I knew so well brought to vivid life by such actors as Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Natalie Dormer, and Henry Cavill. They strode across the stage of this drama as if they owned the place.

I loved every minute of it.

I stuck with the show through all of its four seasons, though I thought at the time — and I still think — that the first two, which focus on Henry’s failing love of Katherine of Aragon and his seduction of, marriage to, and eventual execution of Anne Boleyn, are by far the strongest offerings. The last two seasons, focusing on Henry’s marriages to Jane Seymour, Ann of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr, are still entertaining, but they lack the richness, depth, and tragic contours of the first two.