Goodness, after my several dreadful hours with HBO's Rome, I thought turning to the Tudors would be a smart choice for historical drama. Except this was even worse. Within 10 minutes of Season 1, Episode 1, I can name countless things that are wrong with the show. The script is intolerably pretentious; the background music comes at inopportune times with a laughable ambition of its own to be more exciting than the show actually is; the elite characters have faces that are more suitable for runway than for drama (lady blount, charles brandon). The producers simply put a crew of Upper-East-Side-ish, plain horrible actors in old English costumes. As much as I like JRM's good looks, he simply lacks the appropriate charisma for the role, and let's face it he and the other characters are way too skinny for the show to look the slightest historically accurate. Again, typical hyped-up, pathetic, American crap.