You may remember me mentioning the film “Monarch” back in 2014, a film starring TP McKenna and Jean Marsh. Well, director John Walsh has just let me know that it is available on Amazon Prime in the UK now. I’m not sure about other countries.
Blurb:
An injured King Henry VIII is forced to take refuge at a manor house. He must confront his mortality and the ghosts of his past. An intimate portrait of a monarch before his death.
The debut feature for double BAFTA-nominated writer and director John Walsh makes ingenious use of a single location and a setting of one stormy night.
Here’s the official trailer:
And here’s the link to Amazon Prime UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B095WZ8J75/…
Sounds brilliant and Jean Marsh is a brilliant actress, but what queen was she playing I wonder? In fact with her features she rather reminds me of the kings grandmother, the Lady Margaret Beaufort, I have Amazon prime so looking forward to seeing that.
Watched it last night. Its a bit dark, but very well made and the concept is brilliant. I won’t give the story away, but I do have a question. The last words at the end refers to Queen Mary I exhumation of Henry Viii and burning his remains.
We know that isn’t true, but where is this story from? Does anyone know.
Hello and thank you for watching my film. This was a theory about Henry’s remains which I rather took too and I planned another film about his funeral. Sadly this wasn’t to be. If you liked my film do please leave a review. Some people found it a hard watch and sadly let their feelings know in a stream of negative comments.
Hi John, yes I enjoyed the film itself, its excellent and as a thriller it keeps you wondering what next. It was powerful but I was wondering about the postscript, so thanks for explaining. Seen through the eyes of the King and the servant it is a good drama.
Thank you. Do pass on the good word. It would be very much appreciated.
I heard that rumour which of course is nonsense, some poster on here mentioned it once, it could have been in an historical fiction book and of course many readers believe it then, but as if a queen would treat her father so irreverently ? Mary always adored her father even though for many years they had a love hate relationship.
I knew it wasn’t from anywhere reliable. We have Henry’s bones in Windsor but I suppose it sounds good at the end of a dark psychological drama.
Talk about dark drama Anne Boleyn was on last night and I must admit I had the same mixed reaction as most people. I found it powerful and dark and there is a deep message hidden inside. Anne is played by a Black actress as is George Boleyn and there are a number of different none white cast, but oddly it wasn’t actually a problem. She is excellent. Her character is written in a somewhat controversial way but I thought it worked because of the psychology in the drama.
Anne goes from triumph to tragedy and confident Queen and lover to jealous wife and spurned woman very quickly. She is having a variety of different emotions over suspicions that Henry has a new mistress and not one she approved off. Anne can sense her grip on Henry slipping and the fears and inner turmoil is reflected in how the drama unfolds. It is intense.
However, there are problems with the series already and for me its not the colour of Anne’s skin, its some weird stuff that is totally pandering to modernity. What’s with Anne Boleyn kissing Jane Seymour? There are a few highly sexualised moments more out of Wolfe Hall and Dan Jones should know better. They distracted from what was otherwise a great performance and a powerful dark and difficult drama.
There are some inaccuracies but they are not as obvious as some people in the media proclaim and for once the history is a high priority. I will be watching the rest but I hope that’s the end of anything unnecessary.
I watched the trailer and I just couldn’t relate to it, I posted a few comments on Dan Jones website, I know they are saying we know Anne wasn’t black or her brother Lord Rochford, but to me and I know many others feel the same, it was very hard seeing black people play long dead white historical figures, and I also read the reviews on it and they mentioned Anne kissing Jane, I thought how bloody stupid is that, so now are they are saying both Anne and Jane were bisexual, yes we know it’s historical fiction like Gregory’s ridiculous novels but to me, if you portray the past you have to get it one hundred percent right, some slight variations do not matter, but nothing is more glaringly obvious than skin colour, I couldn’t take it seriously watching black people play Anne and Lord Rochford, I think one of her women was Indian as well, there may well have been fine acting in it, but the miscasting of characters rather reminded me of a school pantomime.
I was very dismayed to see the casting of this programme- many people have worked long and hard to dispel the myths around not only Anne but other maligned historical characters and this portrayal was very misleading (my husband asked me was Anne black -how many other people will think the same.) Anne and George were real people and should be portrayed as authentically as possible- I wouldn’t expect Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks for instance to be played by white actors
Well yes I agree Bonnie, I am not questioning these people’s ability as actors, but to see a black queen with a white English king in a court over four hundred years ago, and several other foreign actors playing historical English characters looks incongruous, and it trivialises the actual tragic events which occurred at that time, as I mentioned to me it rather renders it to the same level as a school pantomime, David Starkey himself noted that you cannot change history and it’s useless to pretend Britain was a Black Country in the past when it was not, I feel this is just another example of the woke brigade who seems to like altering history to suit themselves, the BBC are a prime example of this, one episode of Dr Who showed them travelling back to the early 1800’s, we saw many black well dressed people along with white, again a sheer travesty of Britain’s past, there were black people in the country then but sadly they were slaves, and were in employment to wealthy households, the past cannot be changed even if many dislike it, Dickensian which I really enjoyed had the artful dodger played by a little black boy, again he was a good actor but just didn’t look right in the role, all Dickens characters were white English because he portrayed the world he knew and lived in, all the squalor and the hypocrisy and the wealth of Victorian England, had Dickens wanted a black character he would have invented one, he could have written a book about a little slave boy and that would have been authentic, but to portray actual historical characters who existed as a different race other than their own heritage, is I feel fundamentally wrong, others of course may disagree and think I am being harsh, but I am not I just wish the past to be shown as it was and the people who lived in those times to.
I think people have the wrong idea about Black people in the past. Have you read Kaufman Black Tudors? Have you seen Black and British, which showed how diverse even Victorian England was?
Its not true all Black people were slaves. A mere fraction of the Black population were slaves. Dr Who might have exaggerated but it showed Elizabethan and Victorian London as they were smelly, cramped and diverse. Black people worked as free people in trade, down the docks, owned property, even owned slaves, they joined the army and are commemorated on the Nelson memorial in Trafalgar Square, lived in and out of rich homes and a number had high position.
Slavery was terrible and most slaves lived a miserable existence. It was rife here and a few did end up in rich homes as household servants. They were the lucky ones. Most ended up being shipped back out to our plantations and dying on the sugar production. A number lived in ordinary households, thats how rife it was in society. Shop keepers even had slaves. Many shop keepers were also free white and Black people. Parish records provided a lot of information about ordinary black people who lived in the middle of their community and were known in the local Church. I am not arguing it was as many people as now, there has been immigration in large numbers during the 20th century, but they started to arrive during the Middle Ages. In the eighteenth century there was even a Black aristocratic lady called Belle who started out as a slave. Now that was rare, sure, but it was still possible. She found society racist but she made them accept her. If we had a black Queen during the Georgian era, then anything was possible.
At the top it was almost impossible but some important people did make it. Ironically the records made in order to end slavery by paying compensation to slave owners also shamefully show black industrial property owners and business owners who owned slaves. Women on modest incomes are also shown as slave owners. There are recorded instances of free Black people, living in working class areas, being picked up of the streets and sold to slavery gangs. That goes back to the eighteenth century. A Black lawyer was involved in a number of cases to free them again and hang the gang leaders, not all of whom were white. It wasn’t just white and black people in London, either. You would have seen a fair number of Muslims about, people from India and many Eastern Europe people as well. Despite the problems and even expulsion in the Middle Ages, there was also a growing and sizable Jewish community.
Now all of this doesn’t put a Black Anne Boleyn on the throne, no matter how good an actress, but we have to stop saying all black people in England were slaves. Anne was white, well somewhat tanned and had dark hair with French in her family but there were Black people in good jobs at Henry’s Court. Some came here with Katharine of Aragon. We forget that parts of Spain and France were ruled by the Moors who were a mixture of native African people and Arabs. There is a famous painting of a well dressed Florentine Merchant who was in Venice at the Court who was a Moor and he is Black. Now he may be rare but he was still visible and a member of high society. A member of the Medici succeeded to the title as an illegitimate son and he was a Moore. Yes, I agree, TV shows exaggerate but I think they are making a point, Black people lived in London and they were not all slaves or even poor. I am sure many were poor, but they were still in the heart of the community and very visible.
I don’t have a problem with characters from books being played by diverse groups as they are generic. Not all Dickens characters were white, they were written for a very insular audience anyway. We don’t live in that society and we need to portray a mixed society. These people are not real and can be any colour. Tudor England was diverse, Victorian England was diverse, lets celebrate that.
I must admit I think Jodie Turner Smith is an excellent actress and her presence fills the sets. I want her very badly now to be the next Dr Who. She can kick some backsides. She looked confident, comfortable and every inch a Queen. It sounded mad at first but then the lady sparkled. She actually made an excellent Anne Boleyn. I know we can’t change history, but I don’t think the production people were trying too. They were trying to tell us something about oppression and how are perception is shaped by reputation. It wasn’t really an historical drama, it was a dark thriller. I have other issues with it because they belittled what should have been a very powerful story with a positive message. It wasn’t the costumes, it wasn’t the concept, it wasn’t the drama, it wasn’t the multi culture, it was the dialogue and a cringing propensity to pander to the modern culture who don’t understand history. The gay kiss and odd bit of bad language were simply not necessary. It stuck out and it wasn’t even put into a proper context. I actually thought it got better in the second and third parts, but by then it had lost half of the audience. For me it was what it was, like Shakespeare and the Tudors. It was a wonderful idea and a work of fiction, which could have been better, but it certainly had Anne trending on Twitter.