Wednesday 20 July 2016

449 The Six Wives of Henry VIII



First  viewed :  August  1980

This  was  a  BBC2  repeat, a  decade  on,  of  one  of  the  BBC  drama  department's  greatest  triumphs,  a  six  part  account  of  the  fortunes  of  the  six  women  unfortunate  enough  to  marry  the  murderous  despot. The  series  had  gone  all  over  the  world  and  won  numerous  awards. In  1972  it  was  made  into  a  Hollywood  film  which  kept  Keith  Michell  as  Henry  but  re-cast  all  the  wives. What  was  most  remarkable  was  that  it  was  comprised  of  six  separate  plays, each  one  with  a  different  author. While  it  helped  that  the  cast  stayed  the  same, it's  still  a  bit  surprising  that  it  hung  together  so  well.

The  timing  was  a  bit  curious. The  series  had  already  been  repeated  twice  in  1971  and  1972 but  hadn't  been  seen  since  so  why  now ?  Could  it  have  been  related  to  Michell's  unlikely appearance, earlier  in  the  year, in  the  UK  singles  chart  as  the  performer  of  Captain  Beaky ,  a single  released  to  promote  an  illustrated  children's  book   but  given  airplay  by  Noel  Edmunds on  his  wilfully  perverse  Sunday  morning  show ? The  single  made  number  5  and  Beaky  and   his  arch-foe  Hissing  Sid  the  snake  were  all  the  rage  in the  early  months  of  1980  until  a certain  fictional  oil  executive  copped  some  lead . Did  some  BBC2  executive  catch  a  glimpse of  Keith  mugging away  on  Top  of  the  Pops   and  think  "oh  yes,  I  know  what  we  could  use to  fill  out  the  holiday  schedule" ?

I  only  dipped  into  this  perhaps  because  having  studied  the  Tudors  at  both  primary  and  secondary  school, the  content  was  over-familiar.  I  do  recall  the  last  episode  dealing  with  Catherine  Parr  both  for  her  obvious  horror  that  the  bloated  semi-invalid  king  was  still  going  to  want  his  oats  with  her  and  the  often  neglected  truth  that  Henry  , for  all  his  ravages  , still  thought  of  himself  as  a  Catholic  and  was  under  the  influence  of  the   Catholic  Bishop  Gardiner, presented  here  as  a  villain, in  the  last  months  of  his  reign.

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