A little known fact about the War of the Roses – revealed this week in The White Queen (BBC One, Sunday, 9pm) – is that everyone was hot.
The kings. The queens. Servants. Relatives. Soldiers. They were all so hot, in fact, that both sides had to concentrate quite hard on fighting the war just to avoid getting off with each other.
One other interesting historical fact, also revealed in The White Queen, was that King Edward was the hottest of them all. In the opening minutes of the first episode, he swaggered into view, armour glinting, ego glittering, ready to impress the ladies. Using one of the best of his 15thcentury chat-up lines – "Let down your hair so I may see it" – he set his sights on a lady called Elizabeth Woodville. She seemed mightily impressed with both him and his armour, even though he mainly used it to look at his own reflection.
Quite quickly, the will-they-won't-they situation developed into a they-will-repeatedly situation, and the king and Elizabeth got down to some well-lit lovemaking in a hunting lodge. The novel by Philippa Gregory on which this series is based is supposed to be a feminist reinvention of male-dominated war, but, after some initial feistiness, Elizabeth was hardly impressive, going all girly at the sight of an unbuttoned blouson and her boyfriend's cuirass. She is quite far from being a feminist heroine.
Much more interesting was her mother, Jacquetta Woodville, played by Janet McTeer. Jacquetta was clearly the power-broker in the family and with her Danish pastry hairdo looked a little like Leia Organa's granny. She was also around to explain the plot. "You are a woman of Lancaster," she told Elizabeth, "and the country is divided and you may not marry a man of York." It wasn't the worst of the dialogue though. "I'm happy for your joy," said Elizabeth's brother Anthony.
What saved the whole thing was McTeer as Jacquetta and in particular the three-way bitch-off she had with Elizabeth and the king's mother, Duchess Cecily. The Duchess was not best pleased about her son marrying a commoner and was also pretty hacked off about being forced to wear a dead crow on her head. In the best scene of the first episode, she had no choice but to curtsy to the new queen and it was a bravura display of how to be deferential and defiant at the same time.
What was disappointing was that this fantastic scene came about 54 minutes in after nearly an hour of Max Irons as Edward and Rebecca Ferguson as Elizabeth, swishing around and being beautiful. I say: what about the ugly actors? They need work too. And what about the blood? This was one of the most brutal periods in British history but the whole thing looked like tea break on the Timotei set.
And what about the women? A historical drama with great women at the centre is a good idea but Elizabeth is yet to justify her status as the lead character. "I am a match for any man," she said. Perhaps in the episodes to come, she will prove it.
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