One of the problems with this show is that it tries to tell a story that goes on for several years, over just a few episodes. This means that characters can be very important in one episode, and then gone in the next. It means that storylines might be put in main focus in one episode and then dismissed in the next. It also means things happen's really quickly so you need to try your best to keep up.

One good example is William Compton. He's been a central character in most episodes so far, but it was quite obvious even to someone with practically no knowledge of British historical figures (except royals and other people who had great influence) that he was going to kick the bucket at some point. He's had far more screen-time than the character Knivert (why is the actor portraying him in the opening credits? I can't for the life of me figure out who Knivert is and if he's even appeared on the show yet) but he's not in the opening credits.
In the previous episode Compton turned out to be gay (not as in happy) which explained why they kept the musician character around. This episode however he drops dead right away and that's really all that came out of that. Did we really need the subplot with him having an interest in chorus boys? If it's not going to amount in anything then what's the point of bringing up a storyline? Was it just to be daring and show that they dared to have two people sporting moustasches (sp?) dancing tongue-tango? I don't know, it just seemed pointless to me.

Another storyline that's confusing me right now is the marriage between Princess Margaret and Charles Brandon. I liked this storyline. The two of them had chemistry and I thought their relationship would be interesting to follow. In this episode though they seem to have completely dropped the whole storyline for no reason. Brandon is sleeping around with random women and Margaret is nowhere to be seen. She wasn't even present during the church scene towards the end. If Henry only welcomed Brandon back and not Margaret they should have at least made a mentioning of it.
Thing is, it just doesn't seem to make much sense. Brandon knew how angry the king would be if he pursued a relationship with Margaret, so I'm guessing he wouldn't have done so if he didn't love her. Apparently he loved her enough to marry her even though he knew it brought on the risk of being banished from court (and not to mention subjected to Henry's Queen of Hearts hobby of cutting off people's heads). So why doesn't he have the slightest problem leaving her now and sleeping around with other women? It doesn't seem like the writers have thought this through.

Another example is Henry's bastard son. They include him on the show, they create a problem surrounding the boy and then they kill him off at age 3, when I believe he was a teenager when he died. Why include him at all if you're not going to have an actual point with having the character on the show?

I don't know much about what went on at the British court during the rule of Henry VIII, other than his many marital escapades. I don't know if the writers are bending over backwards to include everything that went on during that time period with the people close to Henry. Thing is though they need to explain what they are doing. Why does a character feel one way in one episode, and then a whole other way the next? Frankly half of the characters are coming off as schizophrenic at this point.

And could they please explain why everyone except Henry hates Wolsey?

I'm still entertained by this show, but at this point the writing is sub-standard, quite frankly. Perhaps the show is meant for a British audience alone, but I don't really think that's the case. And if it is meant to attract viewers from other countries as well then they need to stop assuming that everyone knows this particular era of British history by heart. Stop confusing the viewers, inform them instead. That would make me a much happier viewer. This show has so much potential, and I would love to see it continue on through all of Henry's six wives. I don't know if that's the intention or not, but I hope so. However the writing needs to shape up, or I will be 100% confused before you can say Jane Seymore.

As a side-note, it doesn't help much that the Swedish subtitler (or perhaps subtitlers) don't know the meaning of the word "consistancy". Some character names are subtitled in their English form (like Henry, who is known in Sweden as Henrik) while others are subtitled in their Swedish form (Princess Margaret is subtitled as Margareta). To make it more confusing, they sometimes switch back and forth. In the scene where Henry sends Catherine away to stay with their daughter, her name is first subtitled in its Swedish form Katarina, and then just seconds later it's subtitled as Catherine (as well as sometimes being subtitled as Katherine). Way to go, subtitler/s.

Conspiracies and conspiracy theories are all over the place... What irks me a bit is that I'm not sure whether Wolsey is a bad guy or a good guy. I don't really care either way, but it feels like the show hasn't decided yet and that makes the whole thing a bit confusing. They should also explain further how Henry could break his treaty with the French with apparently no reprocussions (sp?). What exactly was the point of the storyline with the French treaty if it's just tossed aside in the next couple of episodes? Though maybe this will be dealt with more in later episodes.

I don't know how much accuracy there is to Henry's "near death" experience, but it worked quite good as a tool to move the story forward and to get him to finally decide to divorce Catherine. I have to voice a complaint about the show here though, and that is that Jonathan Rhys Meyers is far too young to plan Henry VIII at this stage of his life. Henry looks like he's in his early 20ies while Catherine looks like she's in her mid 40ies. They do not look like they could have been married for 15-or-so years. I have no problems with Rhys Meyers' acting per se, but they should have cast someone who at least looked like he was in his mid 30ies.

Anyway, they are handling the storyline with Anne Boleyn rather well. The poor actress doesn't get to do much other than to walk around and look at things (mostly the king) but they are doing a nice job of portraying one of the perhaps largest reasons why she managed to become more than just another mistress to him.

As a fan of "24" I was happy to see an actor from that show appear. James Frain was really good as Paul Raines and I'm looking forward to seeing more of him on "The Tudors".

I have to say though that my favorite part of the show at this point is the subplot with Princess Margaret and Charles Brandon. I know nothing of the actual life of Princess Margaret (only that since Princess Mary isn't on the show the character appears to be a combination of the two actual women) but it's not too hard to see where this is going. The actors have chemistry and did a good job in their scenes together. I'm looking forward to how this plot evolves. While it's interesting to follow the famous stories of Henry and his many wives, the character of Henry is so high on himself that the love stories are less interesting. There seems to be a lot more potential in the storyline with Margaret and Charles.

However I didn't like how they handled the parts with the Portugese king. The wedding night scene cracked me up, but other than that it wasn't that well handled. Regardless of how terrifying it must have been to be married off to an old man in a foreign country, that was always a risk if you were a princess, and Margaret must have been aware of that. Her behaviour when she arrived and when she got married was... "unprofessional". And I didn't like that she became a murderer towards the end of the episode.

For a pilot episode this was quite alright. Made me interested enough to stick with the show and it felt fresh enough. The setup for the show was original enough to avoid making it feel like just another crime solving show.

I liked the aspect of little clips of his past and of people talking about his past, so I hope that will continue throughout the show. Though I can't help but wonder if the guy would really be so clueless as to modern technology. I don't know what the "technical gadget standard" is at American prisons, but where I'm from inmates have TVs and computers. So that struck me as weird, but since I don't know for sure whether or not he'd be up to speed about technology I'll let that one pass.

Something I liked was the choice of having a lead character going with "zen". It gives some interesting lines and creates a slightly more interesting character. That obsession with fruit was also a fun bonus.

On the negative:
Gee, teamed up with a hot female partner with a "questionable" background? How original. Nobody ever thought of that before. The female cop annoyed me, I would rather have seen something different. I'm guessing she will become the Scully to his Mulder and keep defending him all the time, and slowly grow to see things the way he does.

The case they worked on got too little screen-time. It was like "we have a crime scene", then "we found information" and then "we have the guy". I hope future episodes will have more fleshed out criminal stories. On the other hand, the pilot also has to set up the characters and the background stories, so that doesn't leave too much time for the case.

I find myself liking the first episode of a TV-show about as often as George W Bush finds himself saying something smart. I think the last pilot episode I liked was for "24" back in 2002. When I watched "the Tudors" I was happily surprised to find myself liking it from the start.

I've been meaning to give this show a chance for a while now, since I like historical dramas and I've read a couple of books on Henry VIII. The show has gotten great reviews, so it seemed promising. And the first episode delivered. The casting was good (big yay for Sam Neill!), with the woman playing Queen Catherine delivering the best performance. The setting was really nice. They also did a great job of building up tension for a storyline other than "he, like, got married a lot". Which is good, since we need more than that. Plus from what I gather this isn't meant to be a short-lived series, so I'm guessing we won't be seeing Catherine Howard's head rolling by the end of the season.

On the minus side, they fell into the "too many new characters" trap, like so many other shows. A frick-load of name-dropping and far too many similar-looking faces to keep track of. That guy who was sleeping with Buckingham's daughter looked enough like Rhys Meyers for me to be confused a couple of times. Oh and that thing in the end with presenting Anne Boleyn was quite cheezy.

Another negative thing is that it's got a definite "Rome" complex. "Rome" is one of my all-time favorite shows, but it feels a bit silly when they try to copy it in a show set in Medieval Britain.

But all in all... A very good first episode. I'll be sure to by the DVD box set.

I wasn't too thrilled with this week's episode.

The patient storyline wasn't very entertaining. The solution in the end was clever, I liked that part, but I didn't like how everyone was painted out to be a "bad guy". The patient was a bad guy because he was weak and wouldn't stand up for himself. The girlfriend because she kept "ratting him out" and the parents disapproved of her. The parents because they were downright obnoxious. If they wanted to make a point about prejudism (is that a word?) against the Romani then this was not the way to go. I thought all four of them were idiots, with the possible exception of the girlfriend (who wasn't Romani anyway).

House's wheelchair adventure was a great storyline up until the end. It was very much in character for him and it provided some great comedy. I love the little things, like how he wheeled into Foreman by "accident". But the way the whole thing ended was a let down. It's irritating that House ALWAYS ends up winning; I would like to see him lose every now and then. This was a storyline where it just felt stupid that he won and got his parking space back.

An fun moment though was when Chase and Cameron went to the wrong house. I just loved how Chase spotted that the couple was having an affair in a very House-esque manor. Chase is my favorite duckling, and it's been nice to see him get to do more lately.

One thing that has become evident in this season is that they choose one duckling at a time to give a larger storyline. That duckling is 95% of the time either Foreman or Cameron. Chase has really drifted into the background. It also seems as if they do "periods". A couple of episodes had Foreman in the foreground and then a number of episodes had Cameron, and then back to Foreman and so on. I'm not sure I'm too fond of this. I like that they get episodes where they're more in focus, but not every episode should be like that. I want to see the ducklings as more of a team.

Oh, and something I didn't get... Towards the end of the episode it seemed like they were putting focus on how Foreman (and also Cameron and Chase) is alone and has no time for love. But isn't he dating one of the nurses at the hospital? Just because you're not MARRIED it doesn't mean that you're single.


Best dialogue of the episode:
WILSON: Ah yes, if it isn’t Dr. Ironside.
HOUSE: Ah, if it isn’t Dr. “I had no friends when I was growing up, so all I did was watch TV by myself which is why I can now make constant pop cultural references which no one understands but me.”
WILSON: That’s my name, don’t wear it out.

Wilson is getting more and more clever by the week. I think this is the fourth week in a row where he's had the best lines. Awesome!