The Tudors
The Tudors is a historical drama television series set primarily in 16th-century England, created and written by Michael Hirst and produced for the American premium cable television channel Showtime. The series was a collaboration among American, British, and Canadian producers, and was filmed mostly in Ireland. While named after the Tudor dynasty as a whole, it is based specifically upon the reign of King Henry VIII.
The series was produced by Peace Arch Entertainment for Showtime in association with Reveille Eire, Working Title Television, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and was filmed in Ireland. The first two episodes debuted on DirecTV, Time Warner Cable OnDemand, Netflix, Verizon FiOS On Demand, Internet Movie Database and on the website of the series before the official premiere on Showtime. The Tudors premiered on 1 April 2007; it was the highest-rated Showtime series in three years. In April 2007, the show was renewed for a second season, and in that month the BBC announced it had acquired exclusive broadcast rights for the series in the United Kingdom, which it started to broadcast on 5 October 2007. The CBC began broadcasting the show on 2 October 2007.
Season Two debuted on Showtime on 30 March 2008, and on BBC Two on 1 August 2008. Production on Season Three began on 16 June 2008 in Bray, County Wicklow Ireland, and that season premiered on Showtime on 5 April 2009, and debuted in Canada on CBC on 30 September 2009. The day after broadcast, downloadable episodes debuted in Canada on MoboVivo.
Showtime announced on 13 April 2009 that it had renewed the show for a fourth and final season. The network ordered ten episodes that were first broadcast on 11 April 2010. The series finale was broadcast on 20 June 2010. The final season was shown in Canada on CBC between 22 September and 23 November 2010.
International distribution rights are owned by Sony Pictures Television.
Synopsis
Season 1
Season 1 chronicles the period of Henry VIII's reign in which his effectiveness as king is tested by international conflicts and political intrigue in his own court. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey plays a major part, acting as Henry's trusted advisor.In episode 1, Wolsey persuades Henry to keep the peace with France, and the two kings meet at Calais to sign a pact of friendship. The pressure of wanting a male heir compels Henry to question his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon. He also has a string of affairs and fathers an illegitimate son in episode 2 with his mistress Elizabeth Blount, who is also one of Queen Catherine's ladies-in-waiting. Henry has the traitorous Duke of Buckingham executed.
Anne Boleyn returns from attending the French court, and she catches Henry's eye. Her father and uncle encourage her to seduce the king, though she also falls in love with Henry as the season unfolds. She refuses to become his mistress but insists that he marry her, which pushes him to use Cardinal Wolsey to take action against Queen Katherine. The king instructs Wolsey to get papal agreement for an annulment of his marriage, on the grounds that his wife's previous marriage, to Henry's elder brother Arthur, was indeed consummated. In episode 6, Wolsey makes increasingly desperate efforts to persuade the Catholic Church to grant this, but it proves difficult as a result of the influence wielded over the Pope by Katherine's nephew Emperor Charles V, and this starts to weaken Wolsey's position.
In episode 7, the mysterious sweating sickness arrives in England, killing both the high-born and low-born, and Henry is terrified of catching it; he secludes himself in the countryside away from court with his herbal medicines. Anne Boleyn contracts the illness but recovers. A papal envoy arrives in England to decide on the annulment. The court convenes a special session at which both Henry and Katherine initially are present, and it eventually decides in favor of Katherine. Cardinal Wolsey is stripped of his office as Lord Chancellor in episode 9 and banished to York, where he pleads with the king to restore him to office. Henry chooses his loyal friend Sir Thomas More to be Wolsey's successor as Lord Chancellor.
In the final episode, Wolsey makes one last desperate attempt to save himself by allying himself with his former enemy Queen Katherine, but their plot is discovered and Wolsey kills himself during his imprisonment in the Tower of London after saying a brief prayer apologising for his sins.
Season 2
Henry will do whatever it takes to marry Anne Boleyn, even defying Pope Paul III. He prepares to take Anne on a royal visit to France, having demanded loyalty from the English clergy. The papacy in Rome organises an assassination plot against Anne, but this fails.In episode 3 the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer annuls Henry's marriage, clearing the way for Henry to marry the by now pregnant Anne, which also increases the growing rift between England and Rome. Bishop Fisher refuses to recognise the validity of Henry's marriage — after Henry issues a decree ordering all his subjects to recognise their new Queen — and is finally joined by Sir Thomas More, who is granted permission by Henry to retire from the chancellorship. In episode 5, Fisher and More's refusal to sign an oath of allegiance recognising Henry's supreme authority as head of the English church eventually leads to their execution.
In episode 6, Thomas Cromwell, who has become Henry's chief advisor, announces his plans to cleanse England of dissenters to the new regime. Also, England's relationship with France is complicated by King Francis's refusal to unite their kingdoms in marriage, thus causing Henry to question his decision to have married Anne. Episode 7 sees an increasingly ill and disillusioned Katherine, who has been forbidden to see her daughter, Lady Mary, and Cromwell has legislation approved by Parliament agreeing to the dissolution of first the smaller and then the larger abbeys and monasteries.
In episode 8, Henry has Cromwell initiate overtures to the Emperor to make peace with Rome as a bulwark against a hostile France, and the king starts to pay court to Jane Seymour after Anne's two miscarriages, which follow the birth of Princess Elizabeth. It is his long-time friend Charles Brandon who, with Cromwell, alerts Henry to Anne's apparent indiscretions, and her fate is sealed. She is conducted to the Tower of London, and her four supposed lovers, one of whom is her own brother, are executed, followed eventually by her own execution — delayed by some hours as a result of the French executioner's late arrival from Calais. Her devious father, who shows little remorse at the death of his son and Anne's impending death, is allowed to go free but is banished from court and is shown leaving the Tower without even acknowledging his daughter waving from her cell window.
On the morning of his queen's execution, Henry enjoys a lavish breakfast, symbolically consisting of the mate of a swan he has seen outside his window, as he looks forward to a new start and heirs with Jane Seymour.
Season 3
The third season focuses on Henry's marriages to Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, the birth of his son Prince Edward, his ruthless suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the downfall of Thomas Cromwell, and the beginnings of Henry's relationship with the free-spirited Catherine Howard.Henry marries Jane as his third wife, but his honeymoon period is soon spoiled by a growing resentment against the Reformation in the north and east of England. The growing band of rebels disperses in Lincolnshire but gathers strength in Yorkshire, primarily because of its able leaders such as Robert Aske and Lord Darcy. The royal troops, commanded by the Duke of Suffolk, are severely outnumbered and are forced to parley, whilst on the Continent the papacy sends a newly appointed English cardinal to persuade the Spanish and French monarchs to support the English rebellion, called the Pilgrimage of Grace by its followers as their objective is to restore the old Catholic religious practices.
In episode 3, Henry is determined to stop at nothing to suppress the revolt, his fears stirred by remembrances of the Cornish uprising during his father's reign. He deceitfully persuades the rebel leaders to lay down their arms and disperse their followers, promising to hold a Parliament in York to answer all their grievances; this is never held. A second uprising is savagely suppressed and the leaders executed as Henry, via Cromwell, instructs Suffolk to shed quantities of blood to act as an example. Queen Jane goes into labour and produces a son, but she dies soon afterwards. In episode 5, Henry retires from public view, bereft at the loss of his queen, but finally emerges; his first act is to get the church leaders to agree on a new protestant doctrine.
In the ensuing episodes, the king has the last remaining Plantagenet heirs, the Pole family, put to death as a result of Reginald Pole's attempts to undermine his rule. This creates a schism with Spain and France, and at Cromwell's urging, Henry agrees to an alliance with the Protestant League by marrying Anne of Cleves after first dispatching the English Ambassador to Cleves to negotiate terms, followed by Hans Holbein, who is to paint her likeness. However, Cromwell's plans to bolster the Reformation are undone by Henry's dislike for Anne, whom he calls a 'Flanders mare'. He is unable to consummate his marriage and vents his frustration on Cromwell, which is encouraged by the Duke of Suffolk in league with Edward Seymour, as both want Cromwell removed from office. With his enemies encircling him, Cromwell pleads with Anne of Cleves to submit herself to her husband, but she is powerless to reduce King Henry's antipathy towards her. Finally, Cromwell is taken to the Tower after being accused of being a traitor by the King's Council and, despite writing a letter begging his master's forgiveness, is gruesomely beheaded by an executioner, hungover due to a prior night of drinking with Cromwell's enemies in a final act of vengeance. Only intervention by the commander of the guard delivers Cromwell from his agony.
In the meantime, Sir Francis Bryan is instructed by the Duke of Suffolk to find a woman to rekindle Henry's jaded love interest, and the beautiful and very young Catherine Howard, a relation of the Duke of Norfolk, is introduced at court and catches the King's interest. He beds her in secret, and a new romance begins.