1 post tagged “the tudors”

It seems as though historical drama is one of the hip genres at the moment.  In the past few years, we have had Deadwood and Rome on HBO and The Tudors on Showtime.

All three of these shows have boasted elaborate sets and costumes, incredible writing and acting, and compelling stories.  On the other hand, they are also (Rome, Season 2, I'm looking at you) full of historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations.  Many critics have lamented over the years that t.v. viewing has replaced proper study of history for many people and the counter argument is that watching t.v. is just more fun in most cases.

Both sides have valid points and I find myself, as usual, somewhere in the middle.  I have watched, and enjoyed, all three of the shows listed above; I enjoy needing to rush over to Wikipedia the second an episode is over so I can research who was who and what was what and where exactly were they talking about exactly...  On the other hand, sometimes the lengths to which writers feel they can re-write history for the sake of the story gets on my nerves.  (Ahem, last episode of Rome, ahem.)

But I think the middle ground, the reasonable space is when people realize that most, if not all, historical fiction is designed to show us how things could have happened, not how they happened.  After all, if you're looking for the truth, you'll need a time machine and lots of spy gear as we all know that history was written by the victors.  So, when we watch the Tudors and we see how King Henry VIII divorces Catherine and marries Anne Boylen, we know that this did happen.  When we turn on Deadwood and see the bad guy riding out of town, we know that this did happen.  When we grit our teeth at the backstabbing in the Roman senate, we know that this did happen.  It is the minor details that are left to the writers to make a story that we want to watch.

And this is only on my mind because I finished watching Rome last night and some of the lengths they went to with dropping characters, extending lifetimes, or avoiding historical truths of how some people died, really annoyed me.   On the other hand, when I watched Deadwood, I knew that they were making many, many mistakes with the history and the characterizations and I didn't care.  So I have been wondering what the difference was, and I have no answers.  Just what I wrote above - most of us exist in a middle ground most of the time and that's where we want our stories to be.  Not a documentary and not pure fiction, but the best of both.  Which can be a very hard line to walk.