English Kings (again)

This column first appeared in the Age on November 13, 2004

It's odd to have two such different responses to episodes of the same series but much as I enjoyed tomorrow night's Gunpowder, Treason and Plot (ABC, 8.30 pm) a drama about the life of Mary Queen of Scots, I disliked the following week's episode, on the life of her son, James. In both episodes I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu (to use the courtly langue Mary herself favoured). How is it that after a couple of year of regular television reviewing I have learnt, in detail, of the lives of all the English monarchs of the last five hundred years -and I seem to remember that a large amount of my Sunday night viewing in the early Seventies covered the same ground. Can I expect, that in my dotage, I will yet again have the chance to become a pseudo expert on Henry VIII, his forebears, his wives and all who followed after him?

I don't mean to suggest that Gunpowder, Treason and Plot is not good television- it is. Jimmy McGovern's, who wrote this, is the blunt and nuggetty writer best known for the excellent Cracker (Saturday, ABC, 9.30 pm). Clemence Poesy is passionate and commanding in the role of Queen Mary. But even though these royal lives are no longer served up as the stodgy English fare they once were, these nouvelle offerings don't change the fact that we see little of the history of the common English man on television. As for Australian history, well forget it. Perhaps this hankering for different stories is why I did enjoy learning about Guy Fawkes and his gang in next week's episode of G, T & P. Another plus is that Robert Carlyle is a remarkable actor, though his desire for challenges don't always lead to our viewing pleasure. His King James lurches, leers, touches himself, rapes, and plots his way across the screen. Even I, no lover of the monarchy, could tell that Carlyle's and McGovern's version of James gives him short shrift. This was the king that was considered be both scholarly and a man who avoided wars, but the man we see on TV is a brutal thug with absolutely no redeeming qualities. I don't need my kings to be nice, but I don't like them two-dimensional. The relentless torturing and murder of Catholics by royal decree verged on the Pythonesque - I half expected to see knights trotting along banging their coconut shells together. (Speaking of which, watch Michael Palin's terrific new travel series, Himalaya tonight on the ABC at 7.30 pm.) All that said, the religious persecution G,T & P illustrates makes interesting parallels with religious wars currently being raged around the globe.

On another matter entirely, how convinced are we meant to be that leaving Manhattan for a few months is a form of torture akin to the thumb screws King James was so fond of? I have been a dedicated Sex and the City (Monday, 9.30 pm, Channel 9) viewer, but I have found the notion that Miranda found moving to Brooklyn deeply distressing almost as ludicrous as Carrie's reluctance to go to Paris. Friends (Monday, 7.30 pm, Channel 9) is getting into the act too as Rachel plans to farewell New York for Paris. Both women receive declarations of love when they make the move. Will Rachel and Ross get together? Will Carrie choose the Russian or Mr Big in this week's finale? Most of us know the answers to these questions by now. To me the mystery is this: why did neither of them choose Paris? Certainly Mary Queen of Scots missed it to her dying day.

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