Young Henry doesn't bother to remove a waistcloth while presenting his loins and abs of steel to a salacious young mistress.
March 29, 2007 (Press Release) --
Here in Henry's kingdom by the sea, heads roll; gallantry's on the guillotine. But his passion, in Showtime's "The Tudors," is to put chambermaids and daughters of advisers on their backs and knees. It's good to be the king.
Clearly, this is not the aged Henry VIII of turkey legs and puffy museum portraits. This is Dorian Gray Henry, spoiled by blood and impetuous lust. Someday his bloated portrait will reveal the wrinkles of hedonism. But while it lasts, hedonism is happy fun times.
Thin and playful, the king volleys tennis balls well and never loses at jousting. (Who'd brave execution to plow his lord with a pole?) Sweaty from sport, Henry drips debauchery.
Sex, sex, sex. "The Tudors" implicitly rubs history the right way. The trouble with laced-up, old history stories is we regard them as if they wear chastity belts and aspire to be in Shakespeare's tragedies, which themselves were violent and sensationalistic departures from moral plays during the bard's generation.
Prurient period pieces
Funny how it takes not PBS but cable TV's most expensive pay-cable channels to address bygone eras -- in HBO's just-wrapped "Rome" and now Showtime's "Tudors" -- with narrative texts and tones, more grisly and nuder than what you see in high school classrooms.
In a recent "Rome," a soldier of high rank entered the orgy quarters of a rival peer and didn't deign to glance at enslaved prostitutes being raped at hand. As the two officers conducted business, one unclothed woman wept cautiously on her captor's lap as he forced plum pieces into her quivering mouth.
In "The Tudors," sex is shared mostly among nobles. So it's basically consensual. (Hark, the progress between B.C. Rome and 16th century England.)
Sex isn't always pretty in "The Tudors." Men who operate Henry's court -- not including the Catholic cardinal, who has a wife and children -- merrily send their daughters to Henry's bedchambers in exchange for good tidings.
One of Henry's prey is Mary Boleyn (sister of Anne/ mother of Elizabeth I), who is offered to Henry by her own power-tripped father. Henry gazes at Mary after a long, hard day and asks sweetly, "You've been at the French court for two years. Tell me, what French graces have you learned?"
Henry finds only practical use for his own daughter Mary (the future Queen Mary I). As a little girl, she stands near a castle window while Henry, thinking politically, offers her tiny hand in marriage to Charles V (already the king of Spain and the Holy Roman emperor).
Charles, with his giant chin, squats to smile at the clueless child. "Bravo," he approves and tenderly kisses her cheeks.
Source: http://www.msn.com
Clearly, this is not the aged Henry VIII of turkey legs and puffy museum portraits. This is Dorian Gray Henry, spoiled by blood and impetuous lust. Someday his bloated portrait will reveal the wrinkles of hedonism. But while it lasts, hedonism is happy fun times.
Thin and playful, the king volleys tennis balls well and never loses at jousting. (Who'd brave execution to plow his lord with a pole?) Sweaty from sport, Henry drips debauchery.
Sex, sex, sex. "The Tudors" implicitly rubs history the right way. The trouble with laced-up, old history stories is we regard them as if they wear chastity belts and aspire to be in Shakespeare's tragedies, which themselves were violent and sensationalistic departures from moral plays during the bard's generation.
Prurient period pieces
Funny how it takes not PBS but cable TV's most expensive pay-cable channels to address bygone eras -- in HBO's just-wrapped "Rome" and now Showtime's "Tudors" -- with narrative texts and tones, more grisly and nuder than what you see in high school classrooms.
In a recent "Rome," a soldier of high rank entered the orgy quarters of a rival peer and didn't deign to glance at enslaved prostitutes being raped at hand. As the two officers conducted business, one unclothed woman wept cautiously on her captor's lap as he forced plum pieces into her quivering mouth.
In "The Tudors," sex is shared mostly among nobles. So it's basically consensual. (Hark, the progress between B.C. Rome and 16th century England.)
Sex isn't always pretty in "The Tudors." Men who operate Henry's court -- not including the Catholic cardinal, who has a wife and children -- merrily send their daughters to Henry's bedchambers in exchange for good tidings.
One of Henry's prey is Mary Boleyn (sister of Anne/ mother of Elizabeth I), who is offered to Henry by her own power-tripped father. Henry gazes at Mary after a long, hard day and asks sweetly, "You've been at the French court for two years. Tell me, what French graces have you learned?"
Henry finds only practical use for his own daughter Mary (the future Queen Mary I). As a little girl, she stands near a castle window while Henry, thinking politically, offers her tiny hand in marriage to Charles V (already the king of Spain and the Holy Roman emperor).
Charles, with his giant chin, squats to smile at the clueless child. "Bravo," he approves and tenderly kisses her cheeks.
Source: http://www.msn.com
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