This two disc mini-series is strangely proportioned. Part I, given to the displacement of Katherine of Aragon (Assumpta Serra) as Henry's queen, is dominated by Helen Bonham Carter as a tough-minded and wily Anne Boleyn (no sex before it comes with a crown, she makes clear). Henry (Ray Winstone) is putty in her hands, though her tartness of tongue as much as her inability to bear a male heir, eventually causes Henry to have her head chopped off. David Suchet as Cardinal Wolsey tries to persuade the Pope to annul Henry's marriage to Katherine and when he fails, Anne sees to it that he is driven from power. Part I also covers the establishment of the Church of England to ratify Henry's divorce and distance England precariously from Rome. By the end of Part I, Mary, Katherine's daughter, and Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter, have both been born but they are girls and therefore unimportant to their father.
Part II is more condensed. The remaining four of Henry's queens are paraded quickly past the camera: Jane Seymour (Emilia Fox), who gives Henry his only legitimate son; Anne of Cleaves (Pia Girard) whom Henry sets aside immediately, finding her unattractive; Catherine Howard (Emily Blunt) a promiscuous teenage bride who loses her head for her activities outside the king's bed chamber,and Catherine Parr (Clare Holman), an attractive and wealthy widow whom Henry marries apparently for companionship and who survives him. Meanwhile, Henry swells in size before the viewer's eyes, and Mr. Winstone has ample opportunity to display Henry's violent temper.
The mini-series does not compare at all well with the famous "Six Wives of Henry VIII" which devoted a separate episode to each of the queens, with "Anne of a Thousand Days" devoted entirely to Henry and Anne Boleyn or with a "Man for All Seasons," mainly about Sir Thomas More who has somehow disappeared entirely from history in this film.
Nevertheless, the series is worth seeing, if only for Helena Bonham Carter's Anne and Ray Winstone's tempestuous Henry.
Part II is more condensed. The remaining four of Henry's queens are paraded quickly past the camera: Jane Seymour (Emilia Fox), who gives Henry his only legitimate son; Anne of Cleaves (Pia Girard) whom Henry sets aside immediately, finding her unattractive; Catherine Howard (Emily Blunt) a promiscuous teenage bride who loses her head for her activities outside the king's bed chamber,and Catherine Parr (Clare Holman), an attractive and wealthy widow whom Henry marries apparently for companionship and who survives him. Meanwhile, Henry swells in size before the viewer's eyes, and Mr. Winstone has ample opportunity to display Henry's violent temper.
The mini-series does not compare at all well with the famous "Six Wives of Henry VIII" which devoted a separate episode to each of the queens, with "Anne of a Thousand Days" devoted entirely to Henry and Anne Boleyn or with a "Man for All Seasons," mainly about Sir Thomas More who has somehow disappeared entirely from history in this film.
Nevertheless, the series is worth seeing, if only for Helena Bonham Carter's Anne and Ray Winstone's tempestuous Henry.