The Serpent Queen 1.01. and 1.02.
Sep. 22nd, 2022 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI now had the chance to watch the first two episodes of The Serpent Queen, the new tv series about Catherine de' Medici, and am delighted so far. Now did have cautious hopes, because the biography it's based on, by Leonie Frieda, is reasonably good, the trailer was entertaining, and Samantha Morton as Catherine was promising.
What I had not anticipated is how good Liv Hill is as Young Catherine, which is most of Catherine in the first two episodes (where Morton!Catherine only is in the framing narratiion scenes). The disdainful stare, the death glare, but also the vulnerability and the mental quickness - it's all there, just as it should be, and in tv world where usually very pretty women and girls are declared to be unattractive by virtue of wearing glasses and slightly frumpy clothes, this show - where it's an important plot point that young Catherine is deemed unattractive by most people who meet her - puts Liv Hill in drop gorgeous clothes once she's in France but styles her facially so she does look unpretty. (But memorable, as one character observes.)
The show liberally swipes some attributes from other recent successful series with historical subjects - there's fourth wall breaking by our heroine talking to the audience now and then a la Gentleman Jack, in this case narratively justified by her telling her life story to someone else, plenty of people use the term "fuck" a la Favourite and The Great and the activity itself gets also shown - and there's a lot of sharp dialogue. But the story it tells so far is amazingly fact oriented (so very unlike The Great). Not to say it doesn't take dramatic liberties - for example, Pope Clement (the quondam Giulio de' Medici) shows up in a lot of places where he'd have sent a messenger to in reality, as opposed to coming himself), but he's played by Charles Dance and it makes a point to Our Antiheroine, so honestly, I don't care. Whereas I practically squeed about the show using several important-to-Catherine's-story events in the first two eps already, and in all cases for characterisation. For example, in the first episode young Catherine tries to delay or prevent her being dragged out of the nunnery where she's raised by angry Florentines set on harming her by pretending to be a nun, in the second when everything is against her and points to an early annulment of her marriage - she's not pregnant, her uncle the Pope is dead, her dowry only partially paid, the new Pope won't deliver the rest, her husband doesn't love her and is completely in the thrall of his adored mistress, Diane de' Poitiers, and her father-in-law could use said husband to make another, more advantageous to France match - , she outmanouevres her enemies nonetheless by an impromptu declaration that buys her more time. In both cases, the story is true, and makes a point about teenage Catherine's ability to improvise under stress.
The show doesn't liet Catherine be the only interesting woman, either. Of the others, my favourite so far is Mathilde, a dwarf we first meet serving the (hostile) Abbess in the nunnery where Catherine is raised who later becomes part of her entourage when she's sent to France and who is very matter-of-factly good at surviving. But I also like the servant Rahima whom mature Catherine is telling the story to and playing mindgames with. (Plus I'm curious as to why exactly Catherine decided to mentor her.)
Then there are the locations - they've evidently been filming at the actual Loire chateaus where the courts of Francis I. and Henri II spent most of their time, and these are some of the most beautiful Renaissance palaces I know, so it really is a feast for the eyes. Now, I've been curious about the show would handle one basic problem (if, that is, it would have any basis in rl as opposed to going fully AU a la Reign), to wit, Catherine's husband Henri not loving her, and putting her through a lot of humiliation on a daily basis by openly treating his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, as his true love, whereas if Catherine loved anyone other than her children, it was probably him. Unrequited love can be a really hard sell, especially if the guy in question is as annoying as most versions of Henri tend to be.
This show in its first two eps solves the problem in a variety of ways: first, there's the method of contrast - Henri's older brother the Dauphin (historical spoiler: he'll never get crowned) is a complete jerk in the Joffrey of GoT vein, and father Francis puts Henri down all the time. Then there's the fact teen Henri actually is nice and kind to Catherine when they first meet (so it's understandable she developes a crush; no one else on the show has been kind to her before), avoids his marital duties at first because their wedding night was mortifiyingly public, witnessed by his father (true), and since he's a teenager to, and Diane an adult old enough to be his mother, she's given the narrative responsibility for the way their relationship unfolds. Evidently once Henri is an adult and becomes King, this won't be enough anymore, but for now, it works for me, and for the first time in any version of this tale, I actually like Henri (beyond feeling sorry for his stint as a child hostage, I mean, which yes, the show mentions to explain the froideur between him and his father and to give him something to bond with Catherine over).
So much did I like the first two episodes that I nominated the show as a Yuletide fandom. Here's hoping it will continue as good!
What I had not anticipated is how good Liv Hill is as Young Catherine, which is most of Catherine in the first two episodes (where Morton!Catherine only is in the framing narratiion scenes). The disdainful stare, the death glare, but also the vulnerability and the mental quickness - it's all there, just as it should be, and in tv world where usually very pretty women and girls are declared to be unattractive by virtue of wearing glasses and slightly frumpy clothes, this show - where it's an important plot point that young Catherine is deemed unattractive by most people who meet her - puts Liv Hill in drop gorgeous clothes once she's in France but styles her facially so she does look unpretty. (But memorable, as one character observes.)
The show liberally swipes some attributes from other recent successful series with historical subjects - there's fourth wall breaking by our heroine talking to the audience now and then a la Gentleman Jack, in this case narratively justified by her telling her life story to someone else, plenty of people use the term "fuck" a la Favourite and The Great and the activity itself gets also shown - and there's a lot of sharp dialogue. But the story it tells so far is amazingly fact oriented (so very unlike The Great). Not to say it doesn't take dramatic liberties - for example, Pope Clement (the quondam Giulio de' Medici) shows up in a lot of places where he'd have sent a messenger to in reality, as opposed to coming himself), but he's played by Charles Dance and it makes a point to Our Antiheroine, so honestly, I don't care. Whereas I practically squeed about the show using several important-to-Catherine's-story events in the first two eps already, and in all cases for characterisation. For example, in the first episode young Catherine tries to delay or prevent her being dragged out of the nunnery where she's raised by angry Florentines set on harming her by pretending to be a nun, in the second when everything is against her and points to an early annulment of her marriage - she's not pregnant, her uncle the Pope is dead, her dowry only partially paid, the new Pope won't deliver the rest, her husband doesn't love her and is completely in the thrall of his adored mistress, Diane de' Poitiers, and her father-in-law could use said husband to make another, more advantageous to France match - , she outmanouevres her enemies nonetheless by an impromptu declaration that buys her more time. In both cases, the story is true, and makes a point about teenage Catherine's ability to improvise under stress.
The show doesn't liet Catherine be the only interesting woman, either. Of the others, my favourite so far is Mathilde, a dwarf we first meet serving the (hostile) Abbess in the nunnery where Catherine is raised who later becomes part of her entourage when she's sent to France and who is very matter-of-factly good at surviving. But I also like the servant Rahima whom mature Catherine is telling the story to and playing mindgames with. (Plus I'm curious as to why exactly Catherine decided to mentor her.)
Then there are the locations - they've evidently been filming at the actual Loire chateaus where the courts of Francis I. and Henri II spent most of their time, and these are some of the most beautiful Renaissance palaces I know, so it really is a feast for the eyes. Now, I've been curious about the show would handle one basic problem (if, that is, it would have any basis in rl as opposed to going fully AU a la Reign), to wit, Catherine's husband Henri not loving her, and putting her through a lot of humiliation on a daily basis by openly treating his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, as his true love, whereas if Catherine loved anyone other than her children, it was probably him. Unrequited love can be a really hard sell, especially if the guy in question is as annoying as most versions of Henri tend to be.
This show in its first two eps solves the problem in a variety of ways: first, there's the method of contrast - Henri's older brother the Dauphin (historical spoiler: he'll never get crowned) is a complete jerk in the Joffrey of GoT vein, and father Francis puts Henri down all the time. Then there's the fact teen Henri actually is nice and kind to Catherine when they first meet (so it's understandable she developes a crush; no one else on the show has been kind to her before), avoids his marital duties at first because their wedding night was mortifiyingly public, witnessed by his father (true), and since he's a teenager to, and Diane an adult old enough to be his mother, she's given the narrative responsibility for the way their relationship unfolds. Evidently once Henri is an adult and becomes King, this won't be enough anymore, but for now, it works for me, and for the first time in any version of this tale, I actually like Henri (beyond feeling sorry for his stint as a child hostage, I mean, which yes, the show mentions to explain the froideur between him and his father and to give him something to bond with Catherine over).
So much did I like the first two episodes that I nominated the show as a Yuletide fandom. Here's hoping it will continue as good!
