The Shadow of the Tower
The Shadow of the Tower is a historical drama that was broadcast on BBC2 in 1972. It was a prequel to the earlier serials The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R. Consisting of thirteen episodes, it focused on the reign of Henry VII of England and the creation of the Tudor dynasty.
Episodes
Henry Tudor emerges victorious over Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field and seeks to form a coalition from which he hopes to establish a Tudor...
Henry consolidates his power when Elizabeth gives birth to Prince Arthur legitimizing Henry's claim of descent from the legendary monarch.
Henrys enemies represent commoner Lambert Simmel as the Earl of Warwick, the York pretender. The Earl of Lincoln leaves for Ireland to head the army t...
Henry forms an army to defend himself against the Irish-German army coming against him from Ireland.
King Henry is intrigued by a preacher who is arrested for heresy and speaks with him to persuade him to give up his dissension against the practices o...
The year is 1494 and King Henry is alarmed that the powerful and arrogant Sir William Stanley may be implicated in a plot against his crown .
Addle-brained Sir John Kendall and his dim-witted nephew devise a ludicrous plan to kill the King with a harmless ointment from phony astrologer.
Visionary Italian navigator John Cabot has a difficult time convincing Bristol businessmen and the King that his Western voyage to China is practical...
Heavy-handed tax policies lead the peasants of Cornwall to march peacefully in protest on London, but an ambitions nobleman wants to use the pilgrimag...
Commoner Perkin Warbeck, pretender to Henry's throne, finds he's losing support throughout Europe.
Although Perkin Warbeck enjoys only house arrest for his treason through Henry's mercy, he continues to plot against the King.
In order to give his dynasty more credibility, Henry tries to arrange a marriage between his son and the Spanish princess, but their are preconditions...
The year is now 1501 and Henry is now finally secure on the throne with his promising son Arthur about to marry Catherine of Aragon, however in the sh...
Cast
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TMDB Reviews
CinemaSerf
TMDB4 years ago
James Maxwell was probably far more accomplished as a theatre director than an actor, and his casting here as the first English Tudor monarch, King Henry VII, is probably the source of this drama's struggles. That king had a reputation for deviousness and ruthlessness that this performance seems to overly sanitise; indeed the whole thing lacks the potency and vibrancy of it's chronological successor "Henry VIII and his Six Wives" (1970). It is spread across 13 fifty minute episodes - some based on fact: his defeat of Richard III; accession; marriage to Edward IV's daughter - Elizabeth of York; Perkin Warbeck and his rebellions etc. and some based on potential scenarios that he may have faced during his reign - the best probably being an encounter with Peter Jeffrey as "The Prisoner", a man accused of heretical behaviour because he happens to believe that Jesus is not best represented to the people by a corrupt and venal Church. There is a decent cast drawn from English theatre circles with Norma West appearing, sparingly, as his wife, but the dialogue is overly verbose; the studio scenery implies some of the dinginess of their actual existence but at the same time leaves us looking at something over staged and really pretty unrealistic (and poorly lit) most of the time. The fact that many of the episodes were directed by different people also doesn't help the continuing, pretty tame, narrative of this fascinatingly shrewd individual from history. Maybe had it just condensed the reign into six episodes under the hand of one director then it would have improved significantly? Rarely available nowadays - probably far too expensive to repeat, but it is still very much worth watching despite it's flaws.