Soapy 'Tudors' is all surface

March 30, 2007|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

Someday, actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers may win an Oscar for playing a spoiled little rock star. He has a classic glamour puss -- the petulant mouth, the glinting eyes, the vain aspect. He comes naturally by that I-just-wrecked-a-hotel-suite look, and you know he could silence a roomful of sycophants with but a glare. The Mick Jagger strut? He calls it walking. For him, every day is a Details photo shoot.

But I don't expect Rhys Meyers to win prizes for his King Henry VIII in Showtime's "The Tudors," which premieres Sunday night at 10. He's too bratty, too contemporary, too buzzcut . He's gym-boyish when he ought to be lusty and manly; callow when he ought to be magnificently smug; irritating when he ought to be tragic. Rhys Meyers is miscast, and not because he defies the conventional image of King Henry VIII as a round fellow with a beard. It's his performance that's too thin.

Alas, the lead actor isn't the only disappointment in this expensive 10-part series, which arrives on the crest of a massive promotional wave. The script is thin, too, rarely penetrating the surface of its many 16th-century emotional, religious, marital, and political situations. Written by Michael Hirst , who also wrote about Henry's daughter in Cate Blanchett's "Elizabeth," the series goes only rock-opera deep, moving full-steam ahead without much accounting for character motivation.

Amid his tantrums, Showtime's King Henry plays an almost farcical chess match with his country's future: He wants to fight France, then he wants to find immortality as the founder of "The Treaty of Universal Peace," then Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor become his allies, then France is his ally again. Meanwhile his ego games are frequently interrupted by ladies in waiting, sex scenes, and cries of "Oh, yes, your Majesty!" This is one costume drama that can't wait to get its characters out of their costumes.

The political oscillations are given an entertaining tweak by Sam Neill as the nefarious Cardinal Thomas Wolsey . Wolsey manipulates Henry like a puppet in his power play to become pope, humoring the childish king like an ambitious record-label producer might treat "the talent." Neill clearly relishes the role of a transparent opportunist on the order of J.R. Ewing, and he also manages to evoke pathos as Wolsey's star begins to fall. Wolsey's antithesis, the conscience-driven Sir Thomas More , is given a flat portrayal by Jeremy Northam .