Love for Eighth wonder
DIVORCED, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Much good that rhyme did me when I was sitting my A-level in English History. I often dream I’m sitting it again and the fates of Henry Tudor’s wives are just one of many things I haven’t revised.
SIX WIVES WITH LUCY WORSLEY (BBC2) as well as being one of the strangest programme titles of 2016, provides a longoverdue look at the many marriages of Henry VIII and dares to suggest there might be a bit more to things than the old rhyme suggests.
You do not, after all, even when you are a Renaissance monarch, marry that many times if you don’t enjoy the odd bit of it, and Henry VIII was certainly a man built for enjoyment. In the first instalment (Lucy will be getting through two wives a week for three weeks which beats even Henry’s record), Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was under the spotlight, cracks and all, although there weren’t many, it would appear, for a very long time.
Presented all too often in school books and TV dramas as a barren, diplomatic hitching to a religious, foreign bore, Henry’s time with Catherine could justifiably be called a first rush of love. It’s true that Catherine’s father King Ferdinand II of Aragon was behind the match but negotiations had actually soured and petered out and it was young Henry whose enthusiasm got them back on track.
It didn’t seem to trouble him that Catherine had briefly been wed to his now dead brother Arthur or at least, he didn’t say it had until he wanted the Pope to give him a divorce. When Henry was away fighting the French, Catherine had the cloak of the slaughtered King of Scotland sent out to him with a love note. “I’d have sent his head,” she wrote, “but your servants wouldn’t let me.”
Such a strong wife, of course, became a formidable foe and Henry’s hopes of a quick annulment were dashed when Catherine shamed him at a public hearing in front of the Pope’s envoys.
It was a passionate, human account this one, stressing love, loss, infatuation and rejection as the real motives behind all the dynastic shuffling. It was hard not to get swept up in it, although the presence of Dr Worsley herself, disguised as various costumed servants and onlookers in all the dramatic reconstructions added an unwelcome touch of Disney. I know she likes dressing up but this was a tale that really didn’t need it.
IN PLAIN SIGHT (ITV) is based on the true story of Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel, who not only evaded capture for years but on occasions successfully defended and exonerated himself in the courts. In this retelling, starring Martin Compston as the smoothly arrogant Manuel and Douglas Henshall as Sergeant William Muncie, the dogged, family man copper on his tail, there’s no hint of the “evil genius” caricature so beloved of many a pulp TV show.
Instead, Manuel comes across as what he surely must have been, a clever, twisted human, skilled in the manipulation of everyone around him. Set in Lanarkshire in the Fifties, this isn’t a series that revels in the killer’s cunning, the detective’s quirks or the lavish depiction of the crimes.
The first episode went out of its way to show Muncie at home with his wife and kids and Manuel with his parents and sister, pinpointing the difference between a family that “works” and one that produces psychopaths.