Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn is corny and forgettable This historical drama is full of inert dialogue, cheesy props and stapled-on proto-feminism. Most people would say that Hilary Mantel has rewritten the Tudor playbook to the degree that there’s little point in revisiting the story of Henry VIII and his disposable wives unless your approach is unimpeachably radical; Jean Plaidy (her soapy historical novels were much loved when I was a teenager) and
The Tudors (the dire 2007-10 Showtime series starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers) are a long way behind us now, thank God. But at Channel 5, they seem to disagree. In its universe – not to mention that of Eve Hedderwick Turner, the writer of its new drama,
Jodie Turner-Smith flashes fire and fury in Channel 5’s oh-so-serious Tudor drama, complete with a silly surplus of metaphors – and a weirdly wimpy Henry VIII. Wolf Hall it is not<br>