– A Bundle of Monarchical Joy –
by Sarah Dempster | The Guardian | August 21, 2025
Who had an accent that could skin a corgi? Who was one of the greatest TV monsters of all time? And who did far too much flashing of their buttocks? We put television monarchs under the microscope.
Rejoice! For the historical fiction stork has descended from on high with another bundle of monarchical joy. King and Conqueror (BBC) – a hugely entertaining depiction of the events that led to the Battle of Hastings – is the latest addition to that most stately of small-screen genres: the royal drama.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, though! For the portrayal of any British royal – and here we have Harold II (James Norton) and Edward the Confessor (Eddie Marsan) – is subject to a set of unspoken rules, most of which apply to the circumference of the royal nostrils and vowels, all of which must expand to fill the space available and, where necessary, beyond.
But which small-screen portrayals of British sovereigns deserve veneration? And which deserve banishment to the Tower? God save this lot (or not, as the case may be):
THE BEST
Claire Foy as Elizabeth II in The Crown (2016-2019)
Foy’s multi-award winning performance offered an exquisitely nuanced take on the rise of HRH, from tremulous young newlywed, gasping as centuries of tradition prepare to clamp her in a constitutional headlock, to unflappable monarch, her tiny, gloved hand steady on the nation’s rudder. Even as the queenly baton was passed on – first to Olivia Colman, then Imelda Staunton – it was Foy’s quiet, beautifully controlled study that remained The Crown’s crowning glory: the definitive portrayal of, if you will, The Ascent of Ma’am.
Damian Lewis as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall (2015 and 2024)
Oh look, it’s brilliant Damian Lewis being brilliant again, whether barrelling around Hampton Court Palace like a bearded love-tank or smirking inscrutably at poor, doomed Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) as his principles, perspicacity and waistline gradually melt into a gouty moral abyss. A complex portrait of the isolation and boredom of autocracy, this was a performance as muscular and layered as a Tudor turducken.
THE WORST
Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII in The Tudors (2007-2010)
He’s Henry the Eighth, he is. Alas, he is also Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a situation that would ultimately prove as devastating to the Tudor “brand” as dysentery. The means? Flagrant Irishness. Plus? Distressingly intense buttock work. See also: eyebrows, extended bouts of pouting, shouting “gnyaaaarr” in order to indicate vexation/gout and repeatedly smushing his chin into his chest while flaring his nostrils, like a horse that’s just been refused a divorce by Pope Clement VII.
David Threlfall as Prince Charles in Diana: Her True Story (1993)
It was a dark day for drama and, indeed, logic, when the great David “Shameless” Threlfall agreed to participate in this rush-released adaptation of Andrew Morton’s bestselling biography. Nevertheless, here, for reasons best known to himself, he is; wincing in tweed, biting his lip and saying “ngggnn” in a window-rattling potboiler that recasts the House of Windsor as [needle scratch, crash zoom on startled corgi] the House of Gits. Cue much cufflink-twiddling and a persistent, pained grimace that is less “future King of England” and more “Aardman character with gingivitis”.
Read the rest of the original article at The Guardian