Most period dramas on TV are tosh. Not this one
By Sinead Stubbins
We, as a society, cannot seem to get past the Tudors. We’re obsessed. Anything to do with that mob of sickly 16th-century English royals and we gobble it up like, well, Henry VIII and a piping hot pigeon pie. (I wasn’t around in the 1500s, but I have an imagination for the culinary.)
I’m not criticising. I can’t get past the Tudors either. I’ve listened to so many hours about Henry VIII and his poor wives that I sometimes absent-mindedly repeat the rhyme “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived” while I do the dishes. It’s a bit grim. Besides, I bet those bloody Tudors never had to wash a dish in their life. But I digress.
From left: Emily Bader, Robyn Betteridge, Isabella Brownson and Anna Chancellor in My Lady Jane.Credit: Jonathan Prime/Prime Video
The latest Tudor tale on our TV screen is My Lady Jane on Prime Video, which is based on the bestselling novel of the same name and was created by co-showrunner of The Boys, Gemma Burgess.
It follows the story of Lady Jane Grey, who famously took the throne for only nine days in 1553 after the death of her cousin and Henry VIII’s heir, Edward VI. Lady Jane was a political football tossed between the Protestants, who wanted her in, and the Catholics, who wanted Henry VIII’s eldest child Mary (Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon’s daughter).
Support for Mary grew and grew, the Privy Council said “whoops, we backed the wrong horse” and the teenage Lady Jane was kicked out, accused of treason and executed a year later. Again, a bit grim.
However, My Lady Jane is decidedly not grim. In fact, when the voiceover introduces the audience to Jane (played by the sparky Emily Bader) it notes, “She could have been the leader England needed. Instead, history remembers her as the ultimate damsel in distress. F--- that.”
If that doesn’t indicate to you the satirical tone of My Lady Jane, I don’t know what will. The show is a sort of fantasy (in more ways than one, but we’ll get to that later) of autonomy and justice, with Jane bucking against the power-hungry lords and ladies of the court and the political ambitions they project onto her.
If that makes it sound a bit too “girlboss” then never fear, My Lady Jane balances feminist revising with the absurd, probably best exemplified by the opening scene, in which Jane treats her handmaiden’s STI with a homemade salve like a 16th-century DIY gynaecologist. The show perverts history with absolute relish.
The Tudor family has been well-represented on our TV screens. There were the sexy Tudors of The Tudors (Stan), a Game of Thrones-esque series in which we’re meant to suspend disbelief and assume that Henry VIII had so many wives because he looked like Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There are the political Tudors in Wolf Hall (Stan), which tells the story through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, based on Hilary Mantel’s literary trilogy.
And of course, there are the many feminist retellings of the stories of the daughters and wives in the family who were abused, murdered and mistreated, like Anne Boleyn (SBS on Demand), Elizabeth I (Prime Video), Becoming Elizabeth (Stan) and The Virgin Queen just to name a few. Recently, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander starred as Henry VIII and his sixth wife, Katherine Parr, in the film Firebrand.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is Henry in The Tudors. Credit: Showtime
What makes My Lady Jane different from all these Tudor dramas is that sometimes, in between their power struggles and religious fanaticism, the diabolical characters in this series change into horses. Or hawks. Or crickets. Or bears.
“Did I mention that, in this world, some people can transform themselves into an animal?” the narrator mentions in the first episode. No, you did not, actually! The kingdom is in the midst of a struggle between the persecuted Ethians (who can turn into animals) and the Verities who are just regular old humans, determined to subjugate the Ethians in case they get any wild ideas of taking over England … or something. Some of Jane’s closest allies are secretly Ethian without her ever knowing it.
It sounds mega-silly, I know. The first time a character transformed in the show, I think I actually groaned, which is unfair, given I watch House of the Dragon every Monday with all the self-seriousness of a Shakespeare play.
But whether it’s a metaphor for the Protestant and Catholic struggle of that time or just a fresh fantasy take on a well-worn story, it somehow makes sense.
In the last few years, comedy-dramas like The Great and Dickinson have taken pleasure in dismantling the stories of well-known historical figures like Catherine the Great and Emily Dickinson, pulling at the threads of those legends to heighten the absurdity of them.
I’m not of the opinion that shows that depict historical events need to be accurate to ring true. A fictional television show is allowed to unpick and re-stitch history to make something new. Reality doesn’t always fit together so neatly as to be entertaining, and conveying a vibe is still valuable.
A historical TV show shouldn’t be considered with the same weight as a piece of journalism or a history book after all. It’s more telling of the time it was produced than the time it is depicting. If you’re taking The Tudors as absolute truth, well, we’ve got some bigger problems on our hands.
And everyone knows that the best bit of watching period dramas is looking online to fact-check which bits are true and which are exaggerated.
It makes me wonder if perhaps viewers are tired of the relentlessly prestigious historical shows like The Crown (Netflix), serious programs about the serious business of being a serious royal. When the reality is more absurd than fiction, maybe the only logical artistic choice is to also have them turn into animals.
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