The Tudors

I'm really not a history snob. Really. The time of the Tudors is not even a period of time I excel or remotely care about. When I rented the first disc of Showtime's THE TUDORS, I was merely curious; ROME was so good, what could be done with sixteenth-century Britain?

Well, let me tell you: not much, apparently. My disdain for the show began with the opening sequence: the music was mediocre, the shots were ridiculous, and why, in the world, did this show have a worse opening than a soap opera? I was flabbergasted. Moreover, no one - outside of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Jeremy Northam - seem the least bit at ease in the costumes. They appear to be playing dress-up. Add to that the fact that the first episode was basically a parade of breasts. Yes, boobies everywhere! Honestly, is that all they can come up with to fill an hour of TV?

And then, in episode two, the final shoe dropped. I may not know much about Britian and Henry VIII, but I know Rome. When the show flashed the Vatican before a scene of the dying pope, my eyes popped out of my head. That shot of Rome, which no one probably paid the least bit of attention to, ruined the integrity of the entire show. Why? The Rome shown was present-day Rome: a gleaming St. Peter's Basilica, a nice Baroque bridge, and the Via della Conciliazione - the nice road leading up to St. Peter's.

And now, a short history lesson that will show why this upset me so much. Henry VIII reigned from 1509 to 1547; we can place episode two around 1512. The modern St. Peter's Basilica was built between 1506 and 1626. If there was any church standing on the Vatican Hill in 1512, it would have been the remnants of Constantine's St. Peter's. The groundbreaking on the new basilica would hardly have been noticeable in 1512. Furthermore, to show that magnificent boulevard leading up to St. Peter's Square, the Via della Consiliazione, is only further evidence of the complete ignorance of the producer/director/historian of THE TUDORS. That road was built by Mussolini, completed in 1950. Mussolini had a thing for roads and he did not care what he destroyed in order to have them. He put one through the (Ancient) Roman Forums, through the perfection of the Piazza Navona, and through the Vatican. With this particular road, which is actually quite short in comparison to his other abhorrences, he tore down over twenty medieval and Renaissance buildings, thereby ruining the space of St. Peter's Square which was meant to be closed and surrounded - as the arms testify. Instead, this superbly planned urban space was ruined by an ignorant, stupid dictator - it is now open and clear. I'm not saying it is unimpressive but it destroys the ideas of the great architects who were responsible for these great feats. Below is a view from the dome of St. Peter's basilica, before Mussolini's road:


This is what it now looks like:



In short, I watched the first three episodes of THE TUDORS and was completely unimpressed. (I don't know if that came through in the above diatribe.) All the information I gave above could easily be found in seconds on Wikipedia. Are the Hollywood-types so cocky they no longer bother with basic fact-checking? This only further purports my thoughts that ROME was unique. The togas were worn naturally, Caesar died brutally, and the sex was sweaty and generally not seductive looking. The world was right. Showtime should be ashamed of their efforts. Go take a lesson from the historians hired by HBO.