‘Philippa Gregory’s Six Queens’ Puts New Spin on Tudor History
The bestselling author will dig into the lives of Henry VIII's wives for Channel 5.
The BBC has made a cottage industry out of Lucy Worsley, the historian-turned -TV-presenter who has helmed over a decade’s worth of specials and multi-part series that blend pop culture with historical fact. Popular programs Lucy Worsley Investigates, Lucy Worsley’s Royal Palace Secrets, and Lucy Worsley’s Holmes vs. Doyle have made her a go-to resource among Anglophiles and history nerds alike. So it’s not all that surprising that U.K. network 5 is attempting to create its own version of her TV empire, while tapping into bestselling author Philippa Gregory’s vast fandom.
Gregory is probably best known for her book, The Other Boleyn Girl, which became a worldwide hit and was adapted into a feature film starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. But she’s written dozens of popular historical fiction novels. Her 17-book (and counting!) Plantagenet and Tudor series (which includes The Other Boleyn Girl) also features stories focusing on each of Henry Tudor’s six wives, as well as notable figures from his extended lineage such as Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Pole, and Elizabeth of York. Now she’s set to put her extensive knowledge of the Tudor period on the screen in the new historical documentary series Philippa Gregory’s Six Queens, which aims to dig into the lives of King Henry VIII’s infamous spouses.
The six-part historical documentary series will feature a dynamic blend of the latest AI technology (insert loud sigh here) combined with dramatic reconstruction that will bring the wives, courtiers, and the larger Tudor court to life in vivid and compelling detail, revealing six extraordinary women who navigated the most dangerous court in Europe and changed the course of English history.
Here’s the series synopsis.
Bringing her novelist’s imagination and her historian’s rigour, Dr Philippa Gregory explores the motives of six young women coming from the luxury of the Alhambra Palace Spain to the shabby gentry-status of Wolf Hall England who take the enormous risk of marrying a wife-killer. For one it is the desire to outdo her sister, for one it is her family’s political future. Each woman takes her life into her own hands and risks everything to be queen of England for a different reason. Each one plays her cards her own way, and each one is faced with the dilemma of how to hold a husband who is incapable of lasting love.
“I have long wanted to look at the Tudor wives in the round – each one as an individual and each one as the product of her society,” Gregory said in a statement. “It is too easy to take Henry’s view of the unique and different women who had the courage to dare to marry him. I have long wanted to present a history documentary with the present day omitted. In this series, I step back into time and never break the spell of a re-created past.”
The series is commissioned by 5 and co-produced by Coming Up Roses (part of All3Media’s Objective Media Group) and WPP Media Motion Entertainment. Oliver Wright and Melanie Darlaston are executive producers.
Philippa Gregory’s Six Queens is slated to air later this year on 5. It does not yet have an American distributor.
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