We’ve looked at The Tudors here on TV Scoop in the past (here and here, for example), and I’ve been intrigued how US cable network Showtime has reinvented King Henry VIII and represented the stormiest of all periods of British history. I’m a fan of history, but not of costume dramas per se. Don’t like Jane Austen, do like grittier shows like Rome (which was superb in the second series) and Helen Mirren’s terrific Elizabeth I (for Channel 4). So I was really looking forward to this, more than any other show for a long while.

The Tudors made its debut on BBC2 last night and I couldn’t wait to see it. So did this modern take on a very old story do the business and fulfil my expectations?

There are several things to get your head around from the off. The main talking point of The Tudors is the way King Henry VIII has been turned from a grossly wobbly, gout-ridden ginger into a lithe sex machine. It challenges our traditional perception of the man, and in Jonathan Rhys Meyers the makers could not have come up with a more different type of Our ‘Enry. We’re immediately introduced to him as a volatile, sex-crazed, taut ball of extreme vanity and seething testosterone.

If you can get your head around Rhys Meyers (who’s ok, and I suspect he’ll grow into the role more as the series goes on) you’ll be ok. It’s a big ask, but not an impossible one.

Apparantly writer Michael Hirst was instructed to make this version a cross between The Sopranos and The West Wing, and you can see this transparently – there are lots of whisperings in dark corners, shouty men arguments and already the political machinations of Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neill) and Sir Thomas More (Jeremy Northam) were already beginning to gather speed in the opening episode.

But I found the that the difference between The West Wing and The Sopranos, and The Tudors, was subtetly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series as rich or as deep as The Sopranos on television before, and its plots, sub-plots and characterisation is full of subtely and deft touch. The Tudors is all bluster.

And of course, no series about Henry would not be complete without the women. In the first episode Henry is married to Catherine of Aragon, and is obsessed with siring a son. But he’s also knobbing anything that moves – including both his Queen’s handmaidens. There is a mild amount of boob and bum action, and to me it was all a bit gratuitous. Saucy and juicy and lots of clothes that fall away easily at the merest pull of a string, but a bit gratuitous nonetheless. By the end of the ep though, we’re briefly introduced to Anne Boleyn – the woman at the cornerstone of this series’ great love affair, or so we’re told.

The rest of the episode? There are jousts, there are plots to kill the King and there are more plots from Wolsey to get him to the very top of the Catholic church. So it’s all good stuff, even though we know the outcome and we know the story. What makes it all worth watching is how history is brought to life, and how (and why) some of key characters made the decisions they did (albeit in an imagined and fabricated way).

There’s a really interesting debate over on the Guardian blog today (here) and many comments point to the fact that the many historical inaccuracies make this a tough pill to swallow.

I guess you’ll like The Tudors if you can forgive these historical innacuracies and just judge it as a fun, costume drama romp. To me it was nothing more than highly entertaining confection, and I enjoyed it for these reasons alone. It looks great, and has had plenty of money thrown at it, that’s obvious. But I wonder if the writers and the channel’s insistence on going for the blood, sauce and bluster approach will make the actual drama fall short of the shows it obviously tries to emulate.

Decent and entertaining, but not suepr-brilliant. Crucially thought, it’s whetted my appetite – like all good period dramas - to go away and find out more about the period and the truth.