They're Back....

Friday sees the return of "The Tooders" to UK television, with the start of Series II eagerly awaited by all serious history fans. The BBC have cleverly scheduled it in middle of the summer holiday, when there isn't much opposition - Poirot and Big Brother will be no match for the great Peter "retired Christian" O'Toole as the Pope (the wrong one, but never mind..).

No doubt we can expect more liberties with the facts for dramatic effect . As the Radio Times has it, "...even if some of the history is shoddy they make sure the costumes are based on fact - and they look a million ducats!" Fol de rol!

JRM reassures us that "We're not making a documentary for universities"....Oh yes you are. (Look out for the new distance learning M.A. in Media Studies with Tudor Option offered by the prestigious University of Hampton Court).

Alas no Wolsey, as he topped himself at the end of Series I . I predict a comeback in Series VI when it is revealed he faked his own death. Series III is already in production, with rumours that all 6 wives will be covered. Is anyone lining up to play Anne of Cleves? Will Jane Seymour play herself?

Should be fun.

Image: Anita Briem as Jane Seymour, The Tudors, source Wikipedia Commons

Tudor Bloopers!

Although some felt that Season 1 of "The Tudors" was one long out-take, see Cardinal Wolsey's Vodpod for a selection of sometimes hilarious forgotten lines, corpsing and general banter by the cast, courtesy of the great historical research tool "YeTube".

"The Tudors" is Annoying - Official

A quick post to wrap up the "Rate The Tudors" poll which ran on this blog before Christmas; this was during the first season run of the "bonking and plotting" series on the BBC.

The number of readers finding "The Tudors" to be Annoying just beat the votes for Gripping. Worryingly, 18% of the votes reckoned The Tudors is Accurate...maybe they voted before the episode when Wolsey commits suicide (the blog had a big spike of hits when this happened).

Anyway, all publicity is good publicity as they say, and the Tudors Season 2 preview has had a massive (for this blog!) 152 hits on Cardinal Wolsey's Vodpod.

Whilst on the subject of hits, I have now managed to get above the Cardinal Wolsey Biker Bar (in Hampton Court) website in the Google Search results for Cardinal Wolsey . This is success! Might even make 1000 unique visitors this month....

"The Tudors" fun quiz

Here's a fun quiz which the people behind "The Tudors" have put out as part of a DVD promo. The executioner raises his axe higher with every wrong answer......you can guess the rest.

Wow. Cardinal Wolsey is hot on the Net!

Tonight the last episode of "The Tudors" series 1 aired on BBC1 here in Blighty. According to the mighty Statcounter real-time tracker tool, this blog started to getting an abundance of hits at around 21:50.

This was the moment when Sam Neill (playing myself) must have misread the script, as he picked up his lunch knife (with which he had just neatly sliced an apple), and proceeded to cut his own throat....nice.

So a lot of people are googling " Cardinul Wolsee how did he snuff it" and similar.

Let me reassure readers that this is what is known as a "ratings device", designed to generate controversy and get people to tune in to series 2 whenever it graces our shores. According to my sources Wolsey died of NATURAL CAUSES in Leicester, during his journey down to London to face possible execution for treason.

Here are all posts on Cardinal Wolsey's Death including "that quote" for those interested.

Anyway, the producers of the show made sure we were soon cheered up by a nice scene involving Henry, Anne Boleyn and a tree.

Rate "TheTudors"

I have installed a short survey on the sidebar to give readers the chance to rate the TV series "The Tudors", on which opinions seem to be divided. You can check more than one box! Personally, I rate it both "annoying" and "gripping".