Television - A sweeping Elizabethan tale manages three great scenes, writes Andrew Billen Elizabeth I (Channel 4)

There were three cracking scenes in the launch episode of Elizabeth I on 29 September (9pm). The first came as the opening titles rolled and the queen's servants performed a stately version of the dance of the seven veils. Petticoat after petticoat was removed from the royal person. The slow, onion-like peeling of Elizabeth symbolically promised a similar psychological unwrapping of her personality - and nodded, I thought, in the direction of the reputation of Helen Mirren, playing the virgin in this four-hour epic, as an actress not exactly reluctant to get her kit off. Shockingly, however, the queen was not retiring but being prepped for a gynaecological examination to de-termine whether she was still capable of giving birth to an heir. "Virgo intacta," whispered the doc to her counsellors. And there it was, in a few seconds, the central drama of the film: could the queen win for her alter ego, Bess, a private life?

The second great moment was the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots. The axe fell, but went only halfway through. A further almighty blow was needed before the head span off. This woman had a brass neck and she was not all she seemed to be. When the executioner held up her severed bonce to the crowds, it slipped free of the red wig he had seized it by and fell to the ground. That's television. The final Bafta-deserving sequence was Elizabeth's address to the troops at Tilbury, a speech that Mirren, walking among the crowds of roughly prepared soldiers, gave real welly.

So there were, as has been said of Wagner, some wonderful moments but, boy, were there some terrible half-hours. Filmed in Lithuania, these opening two hours made Elizabethan England look grey and bleak and affairs of court as compulsive as the inner workings of the Transport and General Workers' Union. For long periods only the efforts of Mirren and Jeremy Irons, as her infatuated courtier Leicester, gave this production any heartbeat at all. For plenty of that time, they had to do battle with a script so determined to establish who everyone was, that it forgot to deliver a plot. Although I am often an admirer of Nigel Williams's work, it is significant that of the scenes that carried dramatic weight, the first had almost no dialogue, the second needed no dramatic invention (the double-chop execution and the wig are matters of historical record) and the third featured the martial words not of Williams but of Elizabeth herself (as recollected, at any rate, by an eyewitness 35 years later).

To be fair to Williams, he introduced the nice touch of suggesting the queen stole the line about "the heart and stomach of a king" from a private pep talk Leicester had given her a few minutes earlier. It was clearly his view that Elizabeth was mad about him and when she went off on one, as we kids say these days, he was usually the cause. Leicester's own motives remained maddeningly unresolved, however, in Williams's treatment. Was he really more in love with the widowed Countess of Essex, whom he married? He repeatedly told Elizabeth that she was his second choice after her, but in their one scene together, hubby and wife conspired against the monarch. We were told many times that he was untrustworthy but, apart from this, not why. It would have helped had we been reminded that "sweet Robin" had been in the public dock ever since his first wife, Amy, was found with a broken neck at the bottom of his staircase.

Elizabeth's feelings towards Mary Queen of Scots were almost as opaque. As if to sort them out for us, Williams invented a meeting between the two. This scene did not begin promisingly, with Bess climbing the stairs to her cell while chanting to Leicester a tongue-twister - "Let us hope sweet reason will reason her from her unreason" - that led into a plot summary: "since we both know that the other way will lead my sister to her death and beyond that lies war with Spain for which poor England is ill-prepared". Inside, a plump Barbara Flynn, speaking in 'Allo 'Allo! Franglais, was found stroking her dog, like Blofeld his cat. By the end of the meeting she had, I think, suggested forming a self-help group for misunderstood queens. "Theez is what my dog zinks." I prefer Donizetti's bitch-fight bet-ween the two in Maria Stuarda.

The dialogue was not always dull. Sometimes it was ridiculous. My favourite line came after Elizabeth had signed Mary's death warrant with all the necessary curlicues and then some after her name. "There, easily done," she exclaimed. Well, it didn't bloody look like it. But at least the signature was spectacular to look at. Apart from the authentic-looking costumes, there was nothing much else. Culminating in a Battle of the Armada represented by a single ship, the film featured more off-scene battles than a Shakespeare history play. In television these days, it doesn't matter how well a distinguished actress does her Cleopatra infinite variety act: you want some action. Perhaps the director, Tom Hooper, was saving the budget for the concluding instalment (6 October), although from the trailer it looked as if it was going to be mainly Essex's turn to make eyes at Bess. The story of Queen Elizabeth is one of English history's best tales. It deserves frequent and spirited retelling. Let's hope that BBC1's forthcoming Virgin Queen manages to deliver more than three epic moments.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website