The Tudors

I love this series. The Tudors is a weekly hour-long drama based on the life of times of that most colourful of British monarchs; Henry VIII. It follows his interactions with his numerous wives, friends, children, enemies, lovers, subjects and courtiers from the early years of he reign onwards (as of series two we're onto marriage number four; one divorce, one annulment, one death in childbirth and one beheading).

Anyone expecting something historically accurate and achingly faithful is going to be infuriated by this series. Not your common-or-garden BBC costume drama. Think of it more like a Sex and the City or Entourage with corsets and crowns. Lots of sex, backstabbing, intrigue, danger and heaving bosoms. To given them their due the producers do paint broad historical brushes but they clearly don't expect the viewers to take it all literally.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is actually quite good as the vain, spoilt, brooding Henry VII. The women are all uncommonly beautiful in it - especially Natalie Dormer as the now dispatched Anna Boleyn. I even enjoyed watched Joss Stone as Anne of Cleeves despite the accent that is nearly as bad Tom Cruise's Irish brogue in Far and Away.