1x01
Henry VIII knocks up Bessie Blount. Sean Pertwee is wasted in a cameo role. A young Anne Boleyn shows up. This was good soap.
Best Line:
“French bastards. Bastards!”
1x02
Henry meets the French king. Wolsey (Sam Neill) sulks. Anne Boleyn is suddenly all grown up. Okay.
1x03
Charles V visits. Everyone hates Wolsey. Henry falls in love with Anne Boleyn. The Mary Rose sails by. Henry’s sister Margaret Tudor (who is a bizarre mash up of his two sisters Mary and Margaret) is orange. Thomas More is told he is not a saint. This was okay.
1x04
Margaret Tudor is married to the King of Portugal, whom she later murders. That never happened. Thomas Cromwell shows up to lurk. Okay.
1x05
Henry tells Katherine that their marriage is over. Dull.
1x06
Anne Boleyn revels in being Queen to be as she rides pillion with Henry. She is unaware she has less than eight years to live. Okay.
1x07
The sweating sickness strikes. Henry hallucinates. The idiotic Thomas Tallis subplot drags on. Good.
1x08
Wolsey cannot stop his fall from favour. Anne Boleyn gets Lutheran books from abroad. Katherine insists her marriage is valid. The Tallis plot bores. Okay.
1x09
Princess Margaret Tudor dies of the incurable cough of death. Anne Boleyn introduces Henry to Lutheranism. Boring.
1x10
Thomas More burns Lutherans. Cromwell is ordered to get the King a divorce. Wolsey falls from grace and kills himself. Anne and Henry nearly get it on in a forest but she demands coitus interruptus and Henry stomps around the forest yelling with rage. This was ridiculous.