Merlin and More - April Shows

April is shaping up to be another busy month of new shows and returning favorites. A few new shows include HBO's New Orleans-based Treme (April 11), History Channel's America: The Story of Us (April 25), and ABC's Happy Town (April 28). The papers have been full of glowing stories about the making of Treme, so hopes are high. And given creator David Simon's past success with The Wire, the hopes appear warranted. Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker stated:

Hoo boy, are you going to have fun watching this. It bursts with great rhythm & blues, funk, and jazz music (bouncing covers of everything from George Clinton's ''Pumpin' It Up'' to Bobby Womack's ''It's All Over Now''). It's got superb performances from two Wire vets, Wendell Pierce (as devilish trombone player Antoine) and Clarke Peters (as the leader of a Mardi Gras Indian tribe). There's also Steve Zahn, in his first TV series, playing a ditzy DJ; John Goodman as a righteous English professor; and Khandi Alexander (forget CSI: Miami — this is her best work since 2000's The Corner, another Simon project) as Ladonna, a bar owner. Add cameos by Dr. John, Elvis Costello, the genius record producer Allen Toussaint, and many lesser-known but terrific musicians as both players and actors (go get Trombone Shorty's new album, Backatown, now!), and Treme explodes with pleasure.

Returning shows include SyFy's Merlin (April 2), Showtime's Tudors (April 11), and Fox's Glee (April 13). Merlin was on NBC last year, but it has been moved to NBC's specialty network to a more targeted audience. It may just work. BBC has already ordered a third season of the program, so it has done well overseas. For some reason, the American audience is not taking to the show in the same way. Then again, American networks are notorious for sloppy roll-outs of programs. HBO and Showtime have a certain professionalism almost completely lacking in the "major" networks, which is becoming an oxymoron if there ever was one.

One more point. Last year BBC History Magazine had an interesting article titled The Tudors: This Time it's Political, which looked at the historical accuracy of the program. Michael Hirst, the creator of the series, says it is 85 percent accurate with a few extra twists. It is certainly fun to watch, and it's nice to know that we might actually learn something as well, but how much? The battle goes on. Two years ago, the New York Time's wrote:

If “The Tudors” fails to live up to the great long-form dramas cable television has produced, it is not simply because it refuses the visceral messiness of a “Rome” or a “Deadwood” (the corpse-eating pigs!) but more significantly because it radically reduces it’s the era’s thematic conflicts to simplistic struggles over personal and erotic power. “The Tudors” makes it seem as if the entire creation of the Anglican Church boiled down to Henry’s wish to remarry and sire a male heir. (When Anne gives birth to a daughter this season, the future Elizabeth I, Henry looks as if he were a little boy who got the wrong kind of tricycle at Christmas.) “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Big Love” all have derived their potency from dramatizing the preservation of failing institutions. The paradox of “The Tudors” is that it takes on one of the most powerful and protested institutions in human history — the Catholic Church during the Renaissance — and provides little sense of what the English people have to gain or lose by breaking with it.

Ouch!

And it gets worst. Later on, British historian Dr. Starkey and others made the following observations in the Telegraph:

• Characters wear costumes from the Elizabethan era and travel in Victorian carriages, suggesting that the modes of transport in the series were bought "lock, stock and barrel" from a "Jane Austen leftover".

• The program makers twisted history to show Henry VIII's sister, Margaret, being sent away to marry the King of Portugal instead of the King of Scotland.

• The series depicts Pope Paul III as the man who opposed the move that led to the creation of the church of England. However, the pope who refused to let Henry VIII divorce his first wife was Paul's predecessor, Clement VII.

The final quote was pretty mean: "The series was made with the original intention of dumbing it down so that even an audience in Omaha [in Nebraska] could understand it"

Ouch, again!