Henry VIII - Press Archive - ITV's Henry VIII

Source: Scotsman

ITV's Henry VIII

15 Oct 2003

HISTORICALLY, it was a wee bit shaky, even hackneyed, but ITV’s Henry

VIII was fine television, a lavish costume drama which showed Britain’s

biggest commercial network can still take on the BBC on its own territory

and make a decent fist of it.

Helena Bonham Carter was a little long in the tooth to be playing Anne

Boleyn but David Suchet was superb as Wolsey and Ray Winstone a very

creditable Henry. In excess of 7.7 million tuned in. More of this and the

new combined ITV will soon have rebuilt its credentials for quality,

popular programming.

I have only one quibble: we have little idea what Henry VIII sounded like

but Winstone should have stuck with whatever accent he thought appropriate

from the start. His meandered all over the place, from the Mile End Road to

Southend via the House of Lords. Indeed, at one point, the King of England

was the only person in the drama who wasn’t speaking the King’s English.