Instead of working on my Appellate Brief or studying for tomorrow’s Crim class, I’ve been watching a bit of Showtime’s The Tudors and I’m left fairly ambivalent. I like seeing random references to people like the English composer, Thomas Tallis but I think that my biggest problem with the series consists of casting decisions. One of the characters, for example, strongly resembles Coldplay’s Chris Martin, which makes for some distracting scenes where I want him to start singing about Scientists or Warning Signs. Another example is Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Best known, at least to me, as Alan Grant, King of the Dinosaurs:

And now here:

And Mr. Jonathan Rhys Meyer as Henry VIII is…interesting. Frankly, for me the jury is still out. My knowledge on the Tudor dynasty is weak and my awareness of Henry VIII’s personality is limited. Was he as..um, intense, sex-crazed, and so insecure of his masculinity as it seems so far? I guess he does get married 6 times. (Random fact: guns weren’t invented until the 1600s, about 100 years after Henry VIII. So when he finally has a son and shoots a gun and then talks to the Paleontologist? All fake.)

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Random thoughts after the first two episodes:

  • Being a woman in the 1500s seems pretty rough. Between rape, being used as chattel to advance political interests, being used for…well, sex, and having nothing substantive in the way of….well, rights (property, legal, or otherwise).
  • The legal system seems to have been for crap. I guess we have to start somewhere?
  • In movies and shows where the woman has a baby…where do casting directors get the babies from? What’s the going rate for actor babies? Is this something you can put on your CV?