The Tudors – The Complete Second Season (Showtime DVD)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: C Episodes: B
ALL HAIL
KING HENRY! A second season of the
highly addictive Showtime series The
Tudors has arrived on DVD (and hopefully soon on Blu-ray). If you are just joining the series, you will
most likely be quite lost as each episode highly depends on every one that
preceded it. Season One of The Tudors
was epically portrayed and addictive to watch.
Each episode was more revealing about the world of King Henry VIII and
with its fair share of violence, sex, and backstabbing the series became an
instant hit.
Season Two picks up right where Season One left off (As it ended quite
abruptly); with Henry (Jonathan Rhys Myers) continuing his quest to rid himself
of his first wife (Catherine of Aragon; played by the brilliant Maria Doyle
Kennedy) and wed his newest lust Anne Boleyn (the beautiful Natalie
Dormer). Be aware that the following
entry contains SPOILERS. Soon enough
into the season Henry gets his wish and essentially banishes Queen Catherine of
Aragon and weds Anne Boleyn after strong arming the church, making enemies with
Spain, disobeying The Vatican’s orders, and all in all taking power into his
own hands. The path to power did not
come without any casualties; Henry lost Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neill), his
sister, Sir Thomas More (Jeremy Northam), and many other seemingly innocent
loyals to the crown, but lust beat all.
The strangest part is watching Henry (a seemingly brilliant king) fall
victim time and time again to Anne and her cohorts web of deceit and lies; as
they themselves politically rape and pillage their way to the seat of
power. Anne gained Henry’s affection and
trust through her talents for manipulation and lust alone, but it seems that
once he receives what he had desired from the temptress, Anne Boleyn, that he
is quickly growing tired of her demanding and noticeably corrupt actions. The second half of the season deals more with
the issue of Henry tiring of Anne and looking to take others to his bed;
against Anne’s best efforts to prevent that.
The Lady Jane Seymour toward the end of the season strikes Henry’s
interest and the fanning of their lust begins; though a few heads may roll in
the process. Season Two of The Tudors is
extraordinarily engaging and interesting to watch devolve into moments of utter
chaos as the kingdom’s troubles seemingly come and go like waves in the ocean;
if only it were that simple.
Whereas
the series is amazing to watch and certainly a guilty pleasure to watch; for
those history buffs out there the series may be unexpectedly bothersome. The series takes great liberties with the
characters’ ages and actions, but more so disrupts the historical timeline. The series makes it seem as though many
events happened close together and alter historical players’ ages/looks to make
the series sexier, when in actuality many events happened much later in Henry’s
life and were not so close together. The
events that surrounded Anne Boleyn did not occur until Henry was in his late
30’s or early 40’s and most of the dealings with the religious figures and
Vatican are quite inaccurate. With all
this said, however, the inaccuracies are forgivable for entertainment’s sake
and the creators have openly stated that the series purpose is entertainment
and not to be historical documentary.
The
characters are all around interesting as they display one formal, polite self
in public, but rip off their masks to reveal the darkness of their gritty souls
in private. The manner in which the
series divulges the characters’ deepest secrets and true intentions is slick,
powerful, and impressively creative. At
no point is there a boring point in the series and the viewer always on the
edge of their seat waiting to see what happens next.
The
technical features on this 4 Disc, 10 episode set are not fit for a king, but
slide by as adequate until the Blu-ray arrives. The picture is once again
presented in an anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 Widescreen format for 16 X 9
televisions that nicely gives off the intended “fire lit” atmosphere, but tends
to have some grain, pixilation and compression issues in many scenes. The
colors are once again bright as each scene displays its own mood from “fire
lit” too “white washed” with most of the picture quality being quite crisp. The
sound is adequate with its 5.1 Dolby Digital Surrounds, but fails to give the
‘pop’ one would expect in some of the more heated scenes and comes mostly from
the front.
The
extras are somewhat lackluster as they seem to just be fillers so the set can
say it has extras. One featurette is
Natalie Dormer (Anne Boleyn) visiting The Tower of London and the second
featurette housing interviews with “descendants” of Henry VII that overall is
very scattered and tangential. The
fourth disc also features some episodes of other Showtime series that this
reviewer had no desire to watch (only being one episode each) such as
Californication and This American Life.
There was also some Text Bios and a boring Photo Gallery that is worth
no ones time.
The
series is insanely interesting, well cast, and executed (no pun) even better. A
definite watch and buy.
For more
on Season One, try this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6716/The+Tudors+%E2%80%93+The+Comp
- Michael P. Dougherty II
