The Tudors: Season 2 (2008)

This picture is hot!

During Season 1 of The Tudors, I wasn’t quite sure what to do in terms of finishing the rest of the series. I’m not really a quitter, yet I was unsure if it was going to get better. Not to say that the first season was bad, not at all… it was quite devilishly sexy, but also heavily political early on. Thus is the nature of the story and this program so I can’t really speak against it for that, but I wanted to get to the juicy bits. Naturally one cannot skip the first season and go straight for the second and undoubtedly best, since the first establishes characters and builds that overpowering lust our Lord has for Anne Boleyn. But once all the Wolsey drama is out of the way, it’s time for King Henry VIII to get Medieval on Anne’s sweet ass!

Thriving for complete and total domination on every level, Henry demands no less that everything he so desires… even if it means throwing a small tantrum every now and then. Such as the finale of Season 1 when he’s forced to pull out by His Lady - a moment where she knows that she’s most surely got him in her grasp. Using Henry’s desire not only for a gorgeous woman, but also his incessant yearning to have a son, this naturally makes him frantic and even with opposition at all angles, he will now stop at nothing. By any means necessary, even if he must appoint himself Head of the Church of England, banish his Queen from court, and piss off a Lot of people by pronouncing His law, the law.

Anne as fate would have it , gives birth to a daughter (she immediately apologizes, and Henry  most immediately goes out for some late night arse-snacking) and over the short course of time, she goes reasonably insane. Increasingly paranoid, stressed out to an unhealthy point of two miscarriages, and of course, bewitching as a uh, witch… it seems as if the King has fought so diligently to ‘legitimize’ his new marriage, their daughter and his right to free love, and For What!? Of course, we all know where this is… beheaded. Muahahaha!… sorry, couldn’t resist. What starts off as a slow simmering flame erupts in a smoldering blaze of passion, regrets and carnal violence!

My eyes were glued to the screen, and my hand, well, it was glued to something else. In the 2008 film, The Other Boleyn Girl, Anne was played by none other than Natalie Portman, and her sister Mary, by Scarlett Johansson. How anyone, King or otherwise, could drop Scarlett for Natalie is simply beyond me, and made the film a bit unrealistic. Natalie Dormer on the other hand, exemplifies the term enchanting beauty. Her face, her eyes and her neck (see picture above) are all sublime objects of lust and left me enthralled. I doubt any other portrayal of Anne Boleyn could be surpassed by her performance in this television series. On that same note, Eric Bana is no Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The awesomeness he has shown here, along with the supreme badassness he displayed in Match Point, has won me over.

While Seasons 1 and 3 (and subsequently Season 4 of this series) have been enjoyable, well made, well acted, very well designed, and have taken the most important factor of time to tell the story, the most tantalizing and indulgent bits of this tale were always engraved into Henry's second and new life. This could have easily become a shitty two-and-a-half hour movie starring two women and half a man which focused on only the good stuff. Oh wait! As for the TV Series, well, it went on a bit long for me. I would have preferred four films, one for each season, with the second film being an EPIC in length. Still, no matter how one feels about the film(s) already made or this series as a whole, the insanity between Natalie Dormer and JRM in this program was undeniably hot! If it was necessary to produce two extra seasons out of this to get the sexy parts documented, then I would say that it was well worth it.