Mail Online

A lesson in overcoming our prejudice – against Channel 5

PIERS MORGAN is away Deborah Ross returns next week

Anne Boleyn Channel 5, Tues-Thurs Mare Of Easttown Sky Atlantic, Sunday Kate Winslet’s accent

There was one obvious issue with Anne Boleyn that people found difficult to accept about a supposedly serious historical drama: it was on Channel 5. Totally understandable, really. After all, it had scheduled two of the three episodes alongside Bargain Brits On Benefits and M& S Versus Wait rose: Which Is Better Value? (Frankly not something you’d associate with either store.)

Some 24 years on since the station was launched, its most notable historical drama was probably repeats of The Sweeney from the 1970s. So discovering that Anne Boleyn was so stylishly directed and sharply written was not so much a surprise as almost exciting. Amazingly, it wasn’t remotely as salacious or silly as The Tudors, either.

But of course the most thrilling and original element of all was the casting of Jodie Turner-Smith as Boleyn. These are complicated times when it comes to which actors are considered ‘appropriate’ to play which part: a ‘ woke’ world where Hank Azaria, a white actor, recently felt the need to apologise for doing the voice of Apu, the shopkeeper in The Simpsons (specifically ‘to every single Indian person’, despite 32 years of the whole planet thinking it/he was fine).

Similarly, pressure from LGBTQ groups led to Scarlett Johansson quitting the film Rub & Tug on the grounds that someone from the transgender ‘community’ should play the role of a transgender man. Personally, I’m more concerned about whether an actor is any good, and that won’t depend on their sexuality, ethnicity or skin colour.

If you watched Turner-Smith’s imperious performance and were still bothered that she was black, that was your business – or rather, your problem. If anything, it only enhanced Boleyn’s sense of injustice, anger and insecurity: a true outsider in the royal court.

Episode one started in 1536, Boleyn’s third year as queen, with one daughter and pregnant but doomed not to give Henry VIII the son he demanded.

‘She is the most powerful woman in England,’ the introductory caption told us. ‘She has just five months to live.’ (They didn’t have spoiler alerts back then.)

From the very first scene she was terrific. ‘Oh, you had the winning hand all along!’ she purred pointedly after a metaphorical game of cards with her young rival and eventual successor, Jane Seymour. From then on, Turner- Smith dominated virtually every minute of all three episodes: a mesmerising, passionate presence as a queen, a mother, sister, wife, or mostly a strong woman in a (weak) man’s world.

‘I know what it is like to have all their eyes on you and yet never feel truly seen,’ she told Seymour wanly. ‘They make you feel like a piece of meat.’

OK, it wasn’t exactly Wolf Hall, but apart from some comical plotting by ‘zee Spanish and French ambassadeurs’ it avoided the perils of resembling Blackadder. Mostly it was very Game Of Thrones – just without the dragons, zombies and orgies. (Still, you can’t have everything.) But it had a queen beset by the same psychotic levels of treachery from all those around her (especially her husband). And this, predictably, resulted in paranoia, rage and despair.

Any gratuitous but poetic violence was confined to the beautiful white horse that sent the king flying and paid the price when it had its throat cut.

‘She was a fine creature,’ his wife protested, horrified after seeing its bloody fate.

‘I’ve no use for an animal that won’t obey me!’ Henry roared. Hint, hint…

Any GOT-esque incest was not so much offscreen as invented by her nemesis, Thomas Cromwell. ‘You incited your own natural brother to violate you, seducing you with your tongue in his mouth and his in yours!’ he alleged in her trial for treason and adultery.

In fact, the closest Anne had come was giving Jane Seymour a fierce kiss on the lips, then smiling, like Cersei Lannister: ‘I see the appeal!’ But like the queens in Game Of Thrones, her reign ended badly, and swiftly – beheaded with a single swipe of the executioner’s sword.

Anne Boleyn was a lesson in overcoming our prejudice: Channel 5 isn’t that bad after all.

Mare Of Easttown was also carried by an actor cast against type, and her origins.

No doubt some people would argue that for HBO’s grim seven-part thriller (shown on Sky Atlantic) to be authentic, the title role of beleaguered Delaware County detective Mare Sheehan should have been played by someone from Pennsylvania, ideally somewhere ravaged by opioid addiction, teenage prostitution and gun crime. Rather than Kate Winslet, who comes from Berkshire.

But the best thing about it was watching Winslet throwing herself into the role with real gusto: constantly vaping, swigging Rolling Rock and stuffing her face with junk food (sometimes all simultaneously). Enjoyably, Mare also swore like one of the Sopranos, mostly at her mother Helen (the fantastic Jean Smart). Winslet’s other devices for looking ‘ real’ included wearing what appeared to be several lumberjack shirts and, for two episodes, walking with a limp.

But then whenever dishy lecturer and washed- up writer Richard Ryan ( Guy Pearce) asked the grungey detective out to dinner, Mare would wash her hair, put on a dress, stop limping and, miraculously, transform into a dead ringer for… Kate Winslet, on the red carpet at the Oscars.

Mostly, though, Mare’s time was divided between investigating the murder or abduction of three local girls and the dizzying array of problems in her own insanely complicated, traumatic, personal life. These included: raising her four-year grandson (who had autism), a custody battle with the boy’s mother (a heroin addict), and her ex-husband setting up home with his new fiancee in a house at the bottom of Mare’s garden. Most people would just move, especially as Mare’s son had died upstairs. But instead she had just avoided the room ever since.

The finale was disappointingly contrived and unappealingly upbeat, with the whole town forgiving someone and finding ‘redemption’ – even the creepy deacon.

The closing scene saw Mare finally confront her grief by going up into the attic where her junkie son had hanged himself. In Mare Of Easttown this constituted a happy ending.

Tv & Puzzles

en-gb

2021-06-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://mailonline.pressreader.com/article/282870848750365

dmg media (UK)