Rejoice! For the historical fiction stork has descended from on high with another bundle of monarchical joy. King and Conqueror (BBC) – a hugely entertaining depiction of the events that led to the Battle of Hastings – is the latest addition to that most stately of small-screen genres: the royal drama.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, though! For the portrayal of any British royal – and here we have Harold II (James Norton) and Edward the Confessor (Eddie Marsan) – is subject to a set of unspoken rules, most of which apply to the circumference of the royal nostrils and vowels, all of which must expand to fill the space available and, where necessary, beyond.
But which small-screen portrayals of British sovereigns deserve veneration? And which deserve banishment to the Tower? God save this lot (or not, as the case may be):
The best
Claire Foy as Elizabeth II in The Crown (2016-2019)
Foy’s multi-award winning performance offered an exquisitely nuanced take on the rise of HRH, from tremulous young newlywed, gasping as centuries of tradition prepare to clamp her in a constitutional headlock, to unflappable monarch, her tiny, gloved hand steady on the nation’s rudder. Even as the queenly baton was passed on – first to Olivia Colman, then Imelda Staunton – it was Foy’s quiet, beautifully controlled study that remained The Crown’s crowning glory: the definitive portrayal of, if you will, The Ascent of Ma’am.
Damian Lewis as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall (2015 & 2024)
Oh look, it’s brilliant Damian Lewis being brilliant again, whether barrelling around Hampton Court Palace like a bearded love-tank or smirking inscrutably at poor, doomed Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) as his principles, perspicacity and waistline gradually melt into a gouty moral abyss. A complex portrait of the isolation and boredom of autocracy, this was a performance as muscular and layered as a Tudor turducken.
Eddie Marsan as Edward the Confessor in King and Conqueror (2025)
“Do you hear it?” he whispers, palms upturned and huge face raised beatifically to the rafters. And we do: it is the sound of heaven’s own brass section, heralding a performance of such exquisite, mesmerising strangeness, “one” is compelled to speak in terms of career bests while pointing solemnly at a vast neon sign that reads, simply, “Bafta”. Thus, we are blessed with scenes in which Marsan’s squat, oleaginous Edward chatters to “the saints”, wangs on about God, muffs kingly addresses, looks to mummy (a magnificently vicious Harriet Walter) for reassurance and generally poddles around like a pious 11th-century mole. Send him victorious!
Miranda Richardson as Elizabeth I in Blackadder II (1986)
“But surely the televisual depiction of royalty is no place for merriment,” you (a fool) cry. “It is a palace of solemnity, of august vowels and clenched patrician buttocks, by jove!” You are wrong. For here is one of TV’s greatest royal monsters; wrinkling her tiny nosy-wose at the faintest hint of dissent and greeting everything from practical jokes to executions with the same squealing, dazed wonderment; like a cartoon toddler that has been whacked over the head with a 16th-century frying pan and, inexplicably, quite liked it.
Jared Harris as George VI in The Crown (2016-2017)
It’s a testament to Harris’ extraordinary charisma that the actor was able to turn a role consisting almost solely of the direction “Int: Coughing” into one of the most touching and memorable of all small-screen monarchic portrayals. So here he is, peering rheumily out of a series of royal windows, porridge-y jowls wobbling with the combined burden of … [clears throat] … duty to his country … and [cough] … bloody Churchill. Not to mention his deep concern for his beloved, callow Elizabeth as he faces up to his own, tumour-hastened [Bafta-nominated splutter ] mortality.
The worst
Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII in The Tudors (2007-2010)
He’s Henry the Eighth, he is. Alas, he is also Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a situation that would ultimately prove as devastating to the Tudor “brand” as dysentery. The means? Flagrant Irishness. Plus? Distressingly intense buttock work. See also: eyebrows, extended bouts of pouting, shouting “gnyaaaarr” in order to indicate vexation/gout and repeatedly smushing his chin into his chest while flaring his nostrils, like a horse that’s just been refused a divorce by Pope Clement VII.
Carolyn Sadowska as Elizabeth II in The Women of Windsor (1992)
A Canadian (heavy sigh) TV movie, here, that nudges its snout into the private lives of Lady Diana Spencer (depicted as a sobbing bouffant) and Sarah Ferguson (a horse shouting at a helicopter through a fence). Shonkiest of its uniformly risible performances/impersonations, however, is Sadowska’s The Queen, who glides through her bits like a concussed wig on castors. Highlights: staring expressionlessly at cutlery, mechanically stirring a visibly empty teacup and not moving her lips while speaking, thus ensuring her vowels remain locked in terminal combat (“So you’re fond of horses, Diaaannaaaeuuugh?”).
David Threlfall as Prince Charles in Diana: Her True Story (1993)
It was a dark day for drama and, indeed, logic, when the great David “Shameless” Threlfall agreed to participate in this rush-released adaptation of Andrew Morton’s bestselling biography. Nevertheless, here, for reasons best known to himself, he is; wincing in tweed, biting his lip and saying “ngggnn” in a window-rattling potboiler that recasts the House of Windsor as [needle scratch, crash zoom on startled corgi] the House of Gits. Cue much cufflink-twiddling and a persistent, pained grimace that is less “future King of England” and more “Aardman character with gingivitis”.
Max Irons as Edward IV in The White Queen (2013)
Forsooth, sirrah, with thy idle pouting and thy smouldering toplessness thou dost surely turn the Wars of the Roses into the “Wars of the Poses!” And lo, much vexation does ensue as Max “Son of Jeremy” Irons plays the 15th-century ruler in the manner of an ambulant sex-piñata, with protracted brooding sessions punctuated by the sort of explosive heritage boffing scenes in which there is clearly at least half a metre separating boffer and boffee’s woohoos. Highlights? No. Although there is a bit where he narrows his eyes and purrs, “I’m brave”. Which is something.
Jane Alexander as Elizabeth II in William & Catherine: A Royal Romance (2011)
Bow ties spin in horror as the House of Windsor is reimagined as Chessington World of Sovereigns™ in a Hallmark TV movie of such thoroughgoing stupidity it seems unfair to point the sceptre of shame at a single, poorly wigged element. Still, needs must. So here is the otherwise excellent (and, indeed, Emmy-nominated for her recent guest role in Severance) Jane Alexander slumming it as QEII; a maddeningly peppy action-ma’am whose determination to “embrace this new world!” is conveyed via scenes in which she plays Wii Sports, nods along to hip-hop and says “Kanye West” in an accent that could skin a corgi.
King & Conqueror is on BBC One from 24 August
