Books, Dogs, and Other Blogs

So, I'm hot off the heels of the BBC's White Queen, adapted from the Philippa Gregory books, and I really enjoyed them.  Philippa Gregory was one of the executive producers, so the story followed quite closely to the books from the Cousin's War series.  And, I was dismayed to find out that it was only meant to be a mini-series, not an ongoing show.  Imagine my delight to be immediately presented with Reign, about Mary Queen of Scots.

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/reign

Hold up.  The CW doing historical fiction?  Oooook, if you say so.  I watched the first episode today, so thought I would give my review. 

First off, the costumes suck.  Just flat out.  These girls are probably thrilled to be running around in bad prom dresses all day, but they look like used up prom dates half the time, and a little too boho chic the other half.

Case in point.  There are no hippies in my realm.

Exhibit two.

And so on.  You get the idea.

OK, so maybe they're doing a modern twist on 16th Century dress.  I can overlook that (not really).

Before I started watching, I was actually sort of inspired to read up more on Mary, and learn about her.  I've read quite a bit about Elizabeth and the Tudors, but Mary has been sort of a peripheral person for me.  I don't know much about her, but I can't imagine that she was the blubbering fool that they make her out to be.  I always thought Mary was a bit of a bad ass, and would be something along the lines of:

Instead, she and her pack of minions are loafing about all day, whining about why one lady in waiting's boyfriend is flirting with the queen.  Ummm, because she's the queen and he wants to keep his head maybe?  So where you'd expect a bit of decorum, instead you get:

Lots of silly bickering and angsting happening, so I'm getting a good feel for the target audience, and I think I miss that demographic by just a bit.

Aside from the silliness, and the poor costume choices, there's lots of issues with historical inaccuracies.  You're the queen.  You'd expect that you'd have an entourage, some guards maybe.  You wouldn't be left to your own devices to wander loose in the forest.  You wouldn't be allowed to just cavort unchaperoned with the dauphine.  You wouldn't bitch at the dauphine for not wanting to marry you for love, and do it now.  These things just wouldn't happen.  I'm just waiting for her to entice him with something like:

Ugh. 

So I'm getting less of the White Queen, and more of Twilight than I originally expected.

Oh, and there's a ghost.  With a bag on her head.  She's sort of a cross between this:

and this.

And really pretty much like this, just with a dress.

So am I looking forward to episode 2?  Not really.  But I'll suffer through it since I know what to expect now.