Soon It's Gonna Reign

There’s really not much to say about The Tudors except that it doesn’t differ all that much from that other Showtime series, Queer as Folk. Only this time, the queens are real women.

Just like QAF, this new saga is short on intelligence but big on bed-hopping, handsome men, and a numbskull narrative that offers us Merrie Olde England by way of Aaron Spelling. In short, it’s irresistible. All that’s missing is Sharon Gless whipping up some bangers and mash.

Henry, his six wives, and the big break with Rome has inspired so many movies, plays, miniseries and even one big Broadway floperoo that we get a queasy sense of deja-vu just minutes into the first installment. But then Jonathan Rhys Meyers arrives on the scene. He looks about as much like Holbein’s Henry as Charles Laughton favors Elvis, but he immediately gives us what he does best. He smolders. He broods. He pouts. Then he gets naked and the games begin. His isn’t the only flesh that’s flashed, by the way. Lusty lords are leaping and many a maid is mating in nooks and crannies hither and yon.

Which is probably a good thing since the show doesn’t offer anything new in its consideration of history or the Who’s Who of familiar faces. Sam Neill gives us yet another Cheneyish Cardinal Wolsey, while poor Jeremy Northam hasn’t much to do as yet another nobly pious Thomas More (but then again, the man was a saint for all seasons, there’s really not much more you can do with him). Natalie Dormer plays Anne Boleyn as, what else?, a tarty sexpot while Maria Doyle Kennedy gives us one more tragic and put-upon Queen Katherine. Only Steven Waddington, as Buckingham, provides anything close to a performance but history being what it is, don’t get too attached. Remember that several unlucky players lose their heads in this oft-told tale.

The show looks great and exudes self-important pomp. And although it fades quickly when compared to the dearly departed Rome, it at least gives us something to look forward to on Sunday nights. . Not since The Private Life of Henry VIII or Carry On Henry (with its working title Anne of a Thousand Lays) has royal watching been so much fun.

Hail, Caesar! But beware the Ides of March...

So yesterday I was having coffee with my friend Roberto when our conversation turned to Julius Caesar. He’ll be directing a production of the Bard’s classic later this summer, and we were sharing our enthusiasm for the Joseph Mankiewicz movie version from ‘53, in particular Brando and James Mason, as Antony and Brutus, respectively. He also indulged my babbling on about HBO’s Rome and how there were only two episodes left, what I am going to do, etc. Anyway, we failed to realize we were having this chat on the very eve of the Ides of March. Fancy that.

In fact, I didn’t even think about today being that fateful date until I read the latest posting over at The Phantom Professor. This has little to do with Caesar being carved into cutlets, but it’s still one of the funniest things you will read all week. The Phantom Prof is actually a much-beloved college buddy. I was a wide-eyed freshman when, as a world-weary senior, she took me under her wing. She was like Dorothy Parker, Hedda Hopper and Eve Arden all rolled into one. Still is. For a sampling of her quick wit, read the post, "Beware the Hides of Zarch." Like me, you will probably laugh out loud.

Back to Caesar, just for a minute. If you haven’t seen the Mankiewicz film, be sure to do so. I’ve seen it several times and it never gets old. It’s much better than Stuart Burge’s 1970 version which, to be fair, at least offers, among its few pleasures, Gielgud in the title role (he was a great Cassius in ’53) and Diana Rigg, still looking like Mrs. Peel, popping in as Portia.

And as long as we’re thinking about old Julius, let’s offer a tip of the toga to Rex Harrison’s Oscar-nominated Caesar in Cleopatra, Ciaian Hinds in Rome, John Gavin in Spartacus, as well as Warren William and Claude Rains who played opposite the Egyptian queens of Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh.

And finally, this is a stretch, but a closing “Hail!” to the late Richard Kiley who, in one of his least successful Broadway romps, played Caesar to Leslie Uggams’ Cleopatra in that fabulous, fabled flop from 1968, Her First Roman. Kiley had just left his Tony-award winning smasheroo, Man of La Mancha for this misbegotten adaptation of Shaw’s play. You have to love a show that opens with the chorus boys, as Roman soldiers, belting out that memorable ditty, “What Are We Doing in Egypt?” It closed after 17 performances and lost more than half a million dollars.