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"The Tudors" (2007) More at IMDbPro »

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Episodes: All (28) | With full-length videos () | With videos () | See all videos (16) »

Season: 1 | 2 | 3
Year: 2007 | 2008 | 2009

Season 1

Season 1, Episode 1: In Cold Blood

Original Air Date—1 April 2007
King Henry VIII, the young and ambitious monarch of England, prepares for war with France but is dissuaded by the diplomatic manipulation of his powerful Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, who proposes that the King sponsor a "Treaty of Universal Peace." The harmony of the King's domestic affairs is threatened, however, when he discovers that Elizabeth Blount, the young and beautiful lady-in-waiting to his Queen, Katherine of Aragon, is pregnant with his child.

Season 1, Episode 2: Simply Henry

Original Air Date—8 April 2007
Henry and his court look to sign the treaty with France, though tempers of both kings flare up at the summit. Meanwhile, Henry takes on a new mistress named Mary Boleyn, though he soon tires of her and Mary's sister, Anne, is summoned to the court.

Season 1, Episode 3: Wolsey, Wolsey, Wolsey!

Original Air Date—15 April 2007
The King asks Charles to escort his sister, Margaret, to her betrothed and promotes him to Duke of Suffolk. The envoys from the Holy Roman-Emperor meet with Cardinal Wolsey and determine how to cement the treaty between the two nations. Anne catches the King's notice in a play. The Emperor is invited to the King's court. It is learned that the King of France knows of the treaty talks- and the Cardinal is quick to find a scapegoat. We learn more of why Anne's father and uncle want her to seduce the King.

Season 1, Episode 4: His Majesty, the King

Original Air Date—22 April 2007
As a reward for his denunciation of Martin Luther, the Pope christens Henry "Defender of the Faith," but a brush with death causes the king to seek a solution to his lack of an heir. Princess Margaret marries the decrepit King of Portugal reluctantly, but the union is short-lived; Henry's desire for Anne Boleyn intensifies.

Season 1, Episode 5: Arise, My Lord

Original Air Date—29 April 2007
Henry is displeased to learn that the Emperor Charles V, Queen Katherine's nephew, has released King Francis of France from prison and is forced to look for a foreign ally elsewhere. Meanwhile Katherine's alliance with Charles intensifies as does her hatred of Wolsey. Anne Boleyn turns down the king's proposal that she be the royal mistress, demanding nothing less than being declared queen.

Season 1, Episode 6: True Love

Original Air Date—6 May 2007
Henry is still besotted with Anne Boleyn, queen Catherine asks a diplomat to appeal to her Habsburg relatives. Now the emperor has captured the pope in Italy, cardinal Woolsey promises the king to get a mandate from the cardinals to handle Henry's divorce demand and personally goes to Paris in triumph, to sign a treaty with the French king Francis I. Ann's father Thomas Boleyn tells the incredulous king about the cardinal's stealing confiscated monastical goods. After utterly abject humiliation at Henry's feet, Charles Brandon is allowed to win his return to court by arm-wrestling. When the pope escapes to Orvieto, Thomas Cromwell pleases the king by proposing Ann's former tutor as messenger to present his divorce requests; Woolsey has him intercepted, reads the draft documents and lets him go, sneering the mission is hopeless; the king is furious when it fails indeed.

Season 1, Episode 7: Message to the Emperor

Original Air Date—13 May 2007
Sir William Compton is diagnosed on his Warwickshire estate with highly contagious 'sweating sickness', the physician bleeds his back- death comes swift, his body is burned before burial, Thomas Tallis breaks his lute on the fresh grave, then courts Joan Larke. The Cardinal flatters Ann and announces the alliance with France against the emperor is a fact, while he sends lawyers Stephen Gardiner and Foxe to pope Clement VII in Orvieto, requesting an annulment of the royal marriage to Catherine, if necessary by threats, while the emperor demands confirmation. The duke of Norfolk is removed from court. Just after the arrival of the new French ambassador, who promises French troops will drive the emperor out of Italy soon, the epidemic and utter panic reach London, even the royal court, where Henry tries every remedy, including working up a natural sweat, ultimately flees like most before him. The pope appoints cardinal Campeggio as legate to constitute a divorce court with Wolsey after the plague. Moore tells his daughter Lutheranism is a far worse danger then the plague, in all Europe. Unlike tens of thousands, Anne Boleyn and Wolsey survive, the plague recedes, the papal legate arrives as court reassembles, Tallis conducts a mass of thanks.

Season 1, Episode 8: Truth and Justice

Original Air Date—20 May 2007
Cardinal Campeggio's long awaited papal legation has arrived at court to decide with colleague-cardinal Thomas Wolsey on the royal request for divorce, claiming Catherine's first marriage to Henry's late elder brother nullified his. When Campeggio learns the king won't yield, he suggests an alternative: the queen could retire to a monastery, but only voluntarily, which she refuses, swearing in confessional she came as a virgin to Henry. Thomas Tallis proposes to his late lover Joan's sister Jane. Under Anne Boleyn's love spell, Henry sends bishops to tells the queen she's suspected of hating and conspiring against him, and grows angry at Wolsey's failure to persuade or threaten Campeggio, even sends Charles Brandon to Paris to question the French king Francis I about the true intentions of the emperor, pope and cardinal. Brandon also confirms to father Thomas Boleyn's party the time may be ripe to bring Wolsey down. When the legatine court finally assembles, the king states his case personally as a matter of justice, allegedly after 'his conscience' finally stopped him from keeping silent out of love for the queen. Wolsey simply brushes aside the queen's objections to the competence and objectivity of the court. After imploring justice and appealing to Henry kneeling at his feet, Catherine walks out, to public acclaim, royal fury and Wolsey's despair.

Season 1, Episode 9: Look to God First

Original Air Date—3 June 2007
The legatine court's divorce trial continues in the Queen's absence, hearing testimony suggesting prince Arthur carnally consummated his marriage to Catherine: embarrassing for the court, amusing for the populace. Catherine's council, bishop Fisher, dares claim even heaven can't dissolve the royal marriage, comparing to Herod Antipas' adultery shamed by Saint John the Baptist who was executed for that truth. Woolsey sends Thomas More to Cambria (Cambray) to check if France and the pope remain irreconcilable with the emperor. After Anne walks off, disbelieving Wolsey's promises to the king of a divorce by summer, Henry implies to cardinal Campeggio a negative verdict could turn him and England Lutheran, like half of Germany, yet after a papal message the legate prorogues the court till the end of the Roman Curia's recess, in October; imperial ambassador Mendoza, who is ceding his post to bishop Chapuys, tells Catherine it's the emperor's doing. Henry's sister Margaret dies from the consumption she contracted from Brandon, who recovered. When Thomas More reports the negotiations reconciled the emperor with France and pope Clement, Woolsey fears facing the royal wrath and ends up banned from court, ordered to relinquish all lucrative offices and accused of usurping royal authority. More is persuaded to succeed him as chancellor, under Henry's promise his conscience won't be abused by matters such as the divorce.

Season 1, Episode 10: The Death of Wolsey

Original Air Date—10 June 2007
Now cardinal Wolsey lives in misery as penniless archbishop of and in York, barred from court, hoping in vain Ann Boleyn who broke his hold on the king will reward his efforts as she once wrote, honors and offices are mainly distributed to the Boleyn clan, with Norfolk in charge -Charles Brandon neglects his joint presidency- of the royal council. While the devout, rather ascetic new chancellor Thomas More is determined to crush heresy, personally attending the stake, Thomas Cromwell convinces Henry that under Luther's vision the king is above all earthly laws, even his annulment should merely be treated as a theological matter, so he is commissioned to put the case before European theology faculties, while ambassador Boleyn must approach pope and emperor. Once he tastes the burden of government, Henry reproaches the council less virtue and worse results then the cardinal, especially now the treasury is empty and troubles spread, but when Cromwell learns trough a physician about Wolsey's plot for his own reinstatement with pope and queen, the former master of the game is thrown in the Tower, where he slits his own throat, while More and the Catholic church are doomed now Henry has decided to make his own, almost Lutheran break-up with Rome after most universities and princes sided with Catherine.

Season 2

Season 2, Episode 1: Everything Is Beautiful

Original Air Date—30 March 2008
As he seeks the annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, King Henry VIII appoints himself the head of the Church of England. And Anne Boleyn insists that Henry remove Queen Katherine from the picture -- and Court.

Season 2, Episode 2: Tears of Blood

Original Air Date—6 April 2008
Having sent Cromwell to Germany to find out about the Lutheran church, Henry, realizing that he will not get a divorce from the Papacy ,cuts off all ties with Rome and declares himself to be the head of the church in England. Katherine is banished as Anne is made the Marquess of Pembroke. Despite Brandon's opinion that she may not be a virgin, Henry is besotted with her and journeys with her to France to announce that she is to be the next queen of England.

Season 2, Episode 3: Checkmate

Original Air Date—13 April 2008
Henry destroys all ties with authority and the past. After many failed attempts to have his marriage to Katherine annulled by the Catholic Church, Henry's patience finally wears out and he marries Anne in secret, appoints his Lutheran chaplain Thomas Cranmer the head of the Church of England, and strips Katherine of her title and status of Queen. The king and new queen are disappointed that their first child is a girl, whom they christen Elizabeth.

Season 2, Episode 4: The Act of Succession

Original Air Date—20 April 2008
After princess Elisabeth's baptism, Henry orders Thomas Cromwell to draw up a bill of succession favoring his and Ann's offspring, to be accepted by an oath from all subjects. The affront to the imperialist party is maximized by making princess Mary a lowly lady in waiting to her half-sister, yet the French King still refuses openly to recognize the new Queen. Ann orders her rival lady Eleanor Luke eliminated, by false charges of jewel theft. Tired of Henry's schismatic obstinacy, Pope Paul III makes the loyal, hence jailed bishop Fisher a cardinal, Henry orders his beheading. Thomas More can no longer support his entire family, yet answers Cromwell's questions with Henry's own pamphlet arguing for papal supremacy by divine right. At her father George Boleyn's suggestion only an ambitious mistress is a problematic rival, Ann urges Margaret 'Madge' Sheldon to 'succeed' Eleanor. Thomas More refuses to take the oath as phrased, while accepting he succession, landing him in the Tower.

Season 2, Episode 5: His Majesty's Pleasure

Original Air Date—27 April 2008
Efforts to legalize the Henry's marriage and further advance his authority and power come to steadfast obstructions. Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher demand that only God can govern the church. Arrested and confined to the Tower of London, both men are confronted with charges of high treason and a possible beheading unless they receive the Oath of Allegiance. In the mean time, Henry's adventurous eye endures to stray.

Season 2, Episode 6: The Definition of Love

Original Air Date—4 May 2008
Cromwell convinces Henry the religious houses' immorality justifies spoliation, which even finances plays to show the people the papist 'debauchery'. Henry wants the French king's junior son to marry Anne's daughter Elisabeth. The French envoy, an admiral entertained by duke Charles Brandon, proposes, rather then legitimize the royal son, the dauphin to wed Katherine's daughter Mary- or the emperor's. Charles tells Chapuys he believes Anne is a witch. After More's ghost haunts Henry, Anne further looses openly unfaithful Henry's favor.

Season 2, Episode 7: Matters of State

Original Air Date—11 May 2008
While the Pope still hopes that tide will turn Henry's England back to Rome's fold, Cromwell and Cranmer use a catalog of real, exaggerated and invented clerical abuses to close all religious houses and confiscate their immense wealth for Henry's treasury. The Boleyn family worries Anne's position is perilous without a son, but waits for Katherine' illness to prove fatal. Henry is prepared to ally himself with the emperor despite Anne. Hunting with duke Charles, Henry meets fellow France veteran John Seymour's enchanting daughter Jane.

Season 2, Episode 8: Lady in Waiting

Original Air Date—18 May 2008
The Seymour family hopes Henry's favor may make Jane queen instead of Anne. Pope Paul III excommunicates apostate England and urges pious French king Francis I to invade it. Now Katherine is dead, rumored poisoned, the emperor offers to accept another queen provided Mary is declared the legal heiress. Henry's new love inspires him to enter a joust carrying Jane's color, to the Boleyns' horror, but he is badly wounded. Cromwell prepares for Elisabeth's succession, with grandpa Thomas as regent, but Henry recovers. Anne scolds Henry when she finds Jane on his knee, but looses another child. Henry and Cromwell now consider her an obstacle.

Season 2, Episode 9: The Act of Treason

Original Air Date—25 May 2008
Jane Seymour's brother, Edward, is appointed a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Anne believes she can still marry off Elizabeth to France and repel the Seymours, but Cromwell is only following Royal orders to get rid of the Boleyns and switch to the imperial side, as her father Thomas senses. They believe to have triumphed when Henry refuses Chapuys's discrete alliance offer, but Cromwell tortures musician Mark Smeaton into a false confession of adultery with Anne. Brereton confesses to ensure the Queen's death, Sir Henry Norris and her own brother George Boleyn are equally found guilty and precede her beheading, only Thomas Wyatt is -wrongly- acquitted.

"The Tudors" (2007): Season 2: Episode 10 -- Anne's execution is put off once again.

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Season 2, Episode 10: Destiny and Fortune

Original Air Date—1 June 2008
May 1536, Henry hopes Anne Boleyn's beheading and marriage annulment will allow an anti-French alliance with the emperor. Eager for a 'renaissance', Henry can't even await the arrival of the reputed executioner from Calais to 'ask' Jane's father John Seymour for her hand. She asks him to reinstate princess Mary as heir. Charles Brandon enjoys fatherhood and tells Thomas Boleyn he may leave court, stripped of everything. Anne confesses haughtily but dies graciously.

Season 3

Season 3, Episode 1: Civil Unrest

Original Air Date—5 April 2009
Henry, now forty-five but still looking thirty, marries Jane Seymour. She is known to have Catholic sympathies and, with Imperial ambassador Chapuys, helps reconcile Mary with her father, though Mary must sign a paper to declare that she is illegitimate. Jane's brother Thomas and one-eyed Francis Bryan are given posts at court. Cromwell and henchman Rich order the destruction of monasteries in Yorkshire, giving their treasures to the king. Protesters led by lawyer Robert Aske embark upon the Pilgrimage of Grace, a peaceful rebellion against Cromwell's actions and other social grievances, gathering strength as they march south. Henry sends Brandon with an army to meet them.

Season 3, Episode 2: The Northern Uprising

Original Air Date—12 April 2009
Even being told that Henry has taken a mistress, Jane is confident his love is hers alone, finally being with child. Cromwell enjoys, and immensely profits from, falsely claiming that Charles failed to repress the rebellion with 'only' 74 executions. The duke's son, Brandon, understands he has no choice but break his word and ends many more lives. Bryan takes Jane's junior son, Thomas, along on his mission to demand cardinal Pole's extradition from France or seize him otherwise. Henry gets his son, Edward, at a horribly high price.

Season 3, Episode 3: Dissension and Punishment

Original Air Date—19 April 2009
Henry spends Christmas with Mary, now declared legitimate again, and her ex-nanny, the mother of Reginald Pole. Jane and Mary also reconcile him with daughter Elizabeth. Another guest is Robert Aske, whom the king promises a Northern parliament, based in York. Aske's followers do not believe him and resume the Pilgrimage but they are crushed and the leaders hanged, Aske being imprisoned. Brandon is guilt-ridden and feels Henry has betrayed them, giving Cromwell the chance to lord it over him. Henry however rejoices in Jane's recently declared pregnancy.

Season 3, Episode 4: The Death of a Queen

Original Air Date—26 April 2009
Aske is hanged in chains. Henry learns that Pole is attacking him in writing from the safety of the French court and sends Bryan to arrest him but he has already fled. A reluctant Brandon is forced by the king to kill many innocents in Yorkshire as an example to scare would-be rebels. He is sickened at what he has been made to do and haunted by his victims. Jane is also sickened when she learns how Cromwell - and her husband - have benefited financially from the closure of the abbeys. Suitors are put forward for Mary, a Portuguese alliance being favoured. Jane gives birth to a son but dies shortly afterwards.

Season 3, Episode 5: Problems in the Reformation

Original Air Date—3 May 2009
Devastated by Jane's death, Henry locks himself away, drawing fantasy palaces, with caustic court jester Will Sommers as his sole companion. Edward is brought up in maximum security at Hampton Court, whilst Henry's daughters move to the country. Pole continues to escape Bryan's assassination attempts and takes sanctuary with Cardinal Von Waldberg but in England courtiers are being murdered and Brandon, still afflicted by the massacre of the Pilgrimage of Grace, blames Cromwell. Emerging from seclusion the king presents his "six articles" for the basis of a new,revised church. To Cromwell's dismay they resemble a thinly-veiled return to Roman Catholicism. Henry has a last tumble with Lady Ursula, who leaves the court to be wed.

Season 3, Episode 6: Search for a New Queen

Original Air Date—10 May 2009
A paranoid king has Pole's relations executed for treason as he looks for a new wife. Front runners are Christine,Duchess of Milan, who sensibly rejects Henry, having heard how vile he is, and Anne, Duchess of Cleves, who is Cromwell's favourite as she is a staunch Protestant. Oily Bishop Gardner splits on Protestant 'heretic' John Lambert, who is killed for his beliefs and who is a friend of Cromwell, whom the bishop tries, unsuccessfully, to incriminate.Based on Holborn's portraits of Anne and her sister, the king opts for Anne as his bride.

Season 3, Episode 7: Protestant Anne of Cleves

Original Air Date—17 May 2009
With a French fleet in the Channel, England needs an alliance with the Protestant League, hence Cromwell's endorsement of a wedding to German Anne of Cleves though the king is disappointed that she is less beautiful than her portrait, which fact reflects badly on Cromwell, who urged Holbein to lie in his painting. Brandon and Edward Seymour are amused at Cromwell's discomfort. Mary, a Catholic, is less than cordial to her new stepmother, though Elizabeth favours her. The king's putrid leg wound means that Anne finds him equally repulsive in bed whilst Bryan's obsessive pursuit of Pole once more ends in predictable and comedic failure.

Season 3, Episode 8: The Undoing of Cromwell

Original Air Date—24 May 2009
Mary is attracted to Anne's cousin Philip of Bavaria but he is a Protestant and so marriage is impossible. Henry tires of Anne and Bryan procures 17-year old Katherine Howard to 'amuse' him. He gives her jewels and Nonsuch Palace. She gives him her cherry. Henry seeks to prove the marriage to Anne is void but Cromwell will not support him. A group of conspirators jealous of Cromwell - including Gardner and Brandon - have him arrested for treason on the grounds that he permitted heretic preachings. He is beheaded in a grotesque execution by a drunken headsman who botches the killing, appalling even his foes.Simultaneously Anne is told that her marriage is illegal but she is to be known as "the king's sister" and will be given property and an annuity. Henry Tudor is now free to marry Katherine.

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