Monday, March 22, 2004
Did anyone watch all of Gunpowder, Treason and Plot? The first two episodes were fifty minutes and shown back-to-back last Sunday, the third and final part was one hour forty, shown last night and, despite the fact that James the Sixth is Mary Queen of Scots' son there was no effort to link the final episode to the first two. It's as though Jimmy McGovern wrote James story, then wrote the Mary story at a completely different time and then accidentally sent them to his agent at the same time so the latter thought it was one proposal.
The two stories were pretty good, although the Mary story did suffer a bit from being like most historical dramas, 'here's a historical figure and guess what? She had lots and lots of sex!' The drama concentrated too much, especially in the second part, between a love triangle between her, the husband she hated and her servant Boswell. This rather eclipsed the war between her and the armies of Elizabeth so rather suddenly everything goes from her doing quite well to having lost everything and being imprisoned and her baby being seized by her half-brother.
This is where some awkwardness comes in, Boswell announces he's off to France to raise an army to free Mary and we never find out what happens. The third episode opens with James as a man, we never know anything about his upbringing, except he appears to have cerebral palsy, which results in him limping around castles looking like a medieval Keyzer Soze and loathes women. Robert Carlyle was electrifying as James, although it's like having Begbie from Trainspotting as your king, but I think Tim McInnery was even better as Robert Cecil, banishing memories of him as Lord Percy in Blackadder.
This is the much better part, the sex is brief and instead we get to see much better character work. Characters are suddenly addressing the camera, House of Cards style to help set the drama in context, Cecil sits by the ancient and dying Elizabeth I, Emilia Randall and Hopkirk Fox reveals she's a Puritan spy on the Catholics, but we see how James goes back on his promise to stop persecuting Catholics because he is short of money, driving the Gunpowder Plotters to what they saw as a desperate necessity.
Especially interesting is that McGovern makes no real effort to excuse James' cruelty, especially to his wife, Anne of Denmark, who he makes clear to at the start that he will always hate and that she will hate him back, yet as time goes by they come to a strange form of love for each other. And the Plotters are shown to be desperate, decent men who feel they have been backed into a corner when it's a capital crime to worship as Catholics, James allowing their persecution because he can seize their money for his own when Parliament refuse to give him any. McGovern doesn't try to excuse James, at the end he's still a monster but we feel we can understand why this monster has been monstrous in this situation. The drama ends with the Plotters being shot, medieval-Butch and Sundance fashion and James announcing the persecution of Catholics will continue until they are wiped out.
It was a great bit of telly, shame about the lacklustre first two parts though.
The two stories were pretty good, although the Mary story did suffer a bit from being like most historical dramas, 'here's a historical figure and guess what? She had lots and lots of sex!' The drama concentrated too much, especially in the second part, between a love triangle between her, the husband she hated and her servant Boswell. This rather eclipsed the war between her and the armies of Elizabeth so rather suddenly everything goes from her doing quite well to having lost everything and being imprisoned and her baby being seized by her half-brother.
This is where some awkwardness comes in, Boswell announces he's off to France to raise an army to free Mary and we never find out what happens. The third episode opens with James as a man, we never know anything about his upbringing, except he appears to have cerebral palsy, which results in him limping around castles looking like a medieval Keyzer Soze and loathes women. Robert Carlyle was electrifying as James, although it's like having Begbie from Trainspotting as your king, but I think Tim McInnery was even better as Robert Cecil, banishing memories of him as Lord Percy in Blackadder.
This is the much better part, the sex is brief and instead we get to see much better character work. Characters are suddenly addressing the camera, House of Cards style to help set the drama in context, Cecil sits by the ancient and dying Elizabeth I, Emilia Randall and Hopkirk Fox reveals she's a Puritan spy on the Catholics, but we see how James goes back on his promise to stop persecuting Catholics because he is short of money, driving the Gunpowder Plotters to what they saw as a desperate necessity.
Especially interesting is that McGovern makes no real effort to excuse James' cruelty, especially to his wife, Anne of Denmark, who he makes clear to at the start that he will always hate and that she will hate him back, yet as time goes by they come to a strange form of love for each other. And the Plotters are shown to be desperate, decent men who feel they have been backed into a corner when it's a capital crime to worship as Catholics, James allowing their persecution because he can seize their money for his own when Parliament refuse to give him any. McGovern doesn't try to excuse James, at the end he's still a monster but we feel we can understand why this monster has been monstrous in this situation. The drama ends with the Plotters being shot, medieval-Butch and Sundance fashion and James announcing the persecution of Catholics will continue until they are wiped out.
It was a great bit of telly, shame about the lacklustre first two parts though.
