It makes me wish I had a time machine. (Just to experience the fun parts, not the head-chopping, heretic-burning, no-bath-taking parts.)
Question for anyone who has been watching: who was that woman who got into Dudley’s bed at the last scene? I couldn’t make out her face. Was it supposed to be Lettice Knowles? And is she the red-haired lady-in-waiting? I couldn’t tell if they were the same person.
It’s a smashing show. One point against it is that the times are compressed, or seem to be; for example, it feels like it’s only been a few months since she became queen but it has to be at least 1562 (3 years since coronation) since that’s when she got smallpox, and the first part of the series ends after that. It only seems like 6 months or a year has gone by.
But still very good! Anne-Marie Duff is compelling as Elizabeth. www.pbs.org has a decent site on it although I think there are a few typos re dates in there.
It has been so long since I’ve seen that one I can’t remember.
It is a lot of story for 4 hours, especially since it’s now been 2 and they’re only up to about 1562 or 63. I read on PBS that they do go through her relationship with the Earl of Essex but I don’t know if they stop during the middle or go up to his death. Although that’s near her death pretty much anyway.
I think they are repeating it several times before next Sunday, when Part 2 airs.
Gorgeous costumes, don’t you think? Almost makes me wish we were still wearing corsets all the time. (Almost.)
Sigh. I would have watched it if I had known about it. I can’t find a repeat on my public TV either. Don’t they re-run Masterpiece Theater shows at the end of the season? If so I’ll try to catch Part 1 then.
(btw, I see that “The Lost Prince”, from last season, will be on in December. It’s pretty good.)
I was distracted (as I often am with Masterpiece Theater) by half-recognizing many of the actors. The only one I could figure out easily was the woman playing Robert Dudley’s wife, Amy – she was Georgiana Darcy in A&E’s Pride & Prejudice. Anne-Marie Duff was wonderful as Elizabeth, but drove me mad with the “where do I know her froms.” At the end I dashed in to the computer and checked pbs.org – turns out Duff played Minette in last year’s Charles II miniseries, which I just rewatched recently and that’s where I knew her from. The dude who played the Earl of Sussex similarly tweaked my memory, but I don’t think I’ve seen him any of the other things he’s been in (except Bugsy Malone, but I doubt I recognise him from his turn as BabyFace 30 years ago) so he must just remind me of someone.
Such distractions aside, I loved it a lot. It was the red-haired lady in waiting in Dudley’s bed, by the way, and, according to the website, she is Lettice Knowles. Although, if her name was actually used in the show itself, I missed it.
I am reading Alison Weir’s book on Elizabeth right now and am wondering if it will be mentioned that Dudley was such a skank as to be carrying on as he is. Not sure if that’s just an assumption, though, or if it’s based on fact. I notice the PBS show clearly presents Amy’s death as a suicide when to my knowledge it has never been determined if it was a suicide, accident, or murder; I think Weir keeps it as an unknown (although maybe there’s something more definitive in the book that I haven’t reached yet).
It is an incestuous bunch on MT, isn’t it? Practically everyone has been in one or more other MT series.
How is that? I’ve read several of Weir’s earlier books – the one on the Princes in the Tower, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and I just got her latest (Queen Isabella) for my birthday last month – and quite enjoyed them. She’s written so much on the Tudors, though, I get ‘sequelitis’ when I look at her books on the shelf. I start thinking, “No, I can’t read this one on Elizabeth 'til I read this one on Henry VIII’s children… Oh, and here’s one on Henry himself… And one on Henry’s wives…” And I get overwhelmed and buy something else instead! I’m going to the library tomorrow, though – maybe I’ll get all of her Tudor stuff and just start working my way through! I don’t mind walking out of the library with a great vast stack of books – the bookstore is a different story!
Yeah, Weir acknowleges that her cause of (cause of) death is not known. Weir is (in what I’ve read thus far) very good about not over extrapolating juicy bits of the historical record for salacious interests.
On an even shorter timescale, the clash that has caused the screening of the Anne-Marie Duff version to be pushed back into next year here in the UK was the recent Channel 4 version of the story with Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons. You’re never that far from British TV having another go at a drama about the Tudors, but we’ve currently reached the stage where they’re literally having to queue up to be shown.