Six Wives with Lucy Worsley 

Historian Lucy Worsley visits the time of Henry VIII and tells the story of his six successive wives.

Stars:

Lucy Worsley, Nicholas Agnew, Scott Arthur

Cast

Series cast summary:
Lucy Worsley	...	Herself - Presenter 3 episodes, 2016
Nicholas Agnew	...	Henry Norris 3 episodes, 2016
Scott Arthur	...	Henry VIII 2 episodes, 2016
Paola Bontempi	...	Catherine of Aragon 2 episodes, 2016
Claire Cooper	...	Anne Boleyn 2 episodes, 2016
Alison Garner	...	Anne of Cleves's Lady-In-Waiting / ... 2 episodes, 2016
Crispin Letts	...	Archbishop Cranmer 2 episodes, 2016
Bea Segura	...	Maria De Salinas 2 episodes, 2016

Storyline

Historian Lucy Worsley visits the time of Henry VIII and tells the story of his six successive wives.

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Plot Keywords:

queen consort | playing cards | english law | catholic church | religion | 

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Genres:

Biography | Drama | History

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Certificate:

TV-PG

Details

Official Sites:

official site

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 January 2017 (USA)

Also Known As:

Secrets of the Six Wives

Company Credits

Production Co:

BBC One

Technical Specs

Runtime:

60 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Queen Catherine of Aragon is nearly always portrayed as a Spanish brunette in both fiction and documentaries. However, she was in fact, a strawberry blonde with blue eyes and a fair complexion. This was discovered when a painting of Catherine by Michael Sittow, c1502, was authenticated.

User Reviews

Fair, if Rushed, Look at Henry's Wives

Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.

Lucy Worsley goes where many historians have gone before -- but in a unique way, by stepping back in time to illustrate scenes from Tudor life. She spends a decent chunk of the three episodes with Katharine of Aragon, revealing her as the "warrior queen" devoted to her husband's spiritual welfare, dispelling the myth of her as an angry, bitter old woman and instead showing the fire and zeal of a true fighter, who gave Henry 'what for' over seven years.

Her Anne Boleyn is a fair portrait of an intelligent, ambitious woman in over her head, whose flirtations give rise to scandal and set her up for removal.

She defends Jane Seymour as no doormat, but instead an intelligent, clever woman intending to play one in order to survive.

Anne of Cleves is depicted as the one woman who outsmarted all the others, who held out for better things, and died better off by far than any of the others.

Katherine Howard arguably receives the greatest re-imagining, with Worsley raising questions about her affair with Culpepper being the result of blackmail over her previous sexual activities -- and she boldly attacks the presuppositions about Katherine as a "slut" by staring into the camera and asserting that nowadays, we'd call her an abused child.

Katherine Parr is portrayed as the most "intellectually curious" of Henry's wives, with much emphasis placed on her evangelism, her writing of the first book in England published by a woman, and her cleverness in managing to escape an arrest warrant.

It's arguably brief. It glosses over much in each woman's life. You'd need longer than three episodes to explore the first two queens' humanitarian work, or Katherine Howard's compassion to those in need (including poor imprisoned Margaret Pole), but for a brief introductory biography that escapes common clichés and biases, and treats each wife fairly with no hints of favoritism, it's an excellent three hours.