Papal bull

11:10am Friday 15th August 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Coming Up (C4, 11.40pm); The Tudors (BBC2, 9pm)

FUNNY the things you come across on late night TV. Only the other evening there was Oscar-nominated actress Imelda Staunton being barked at by her real-life husband Jim Carter.

With a cheery ‘woof, woof’, he waved her off to the bowling green where two men in balaclavas kidnapped her on the instructions of her daughter.

This offspring was more barking than Mr Carter’s canine-inclined character.

You could tell by her phone message: “I’m not here, say something nice.”

The kidnappers were armed – with an asthma inhaler – but inhibited from completing their task by the fact that one was allergic to wool, the very stuff from which the other hitman’s mother had knitted the aforementioned balaclavas.

Amazingly written and nimbly directed by Kate Hardie (an actress in her day job), Little Bill Um is part of C4’s Coming Up series of short films giving an airing to the work of fresh talent.

They’re short and sweet (the films, not the film-makers) and attract performers of the calibre of Staunton to lend a touch of class to the proceedings.

Tonight’s Emo is the story of a new employee at a furniture shop, Vincent (Jefferson Hall). He’s harbouring a secret that his colleagues are keen to unearth.

“I mean he’s good looking, but there’s something a little bit wrong with him,”

observes one girl. He’s given to carrying a copy of The Great Gatsby around with him and asking his old teacher out for a drink.

Vincent is clearly a bright boy. We learn he got 97 per cent in his English paper. I wonder if the writer of The Tudors got A-level history? He seems a little confused in this latest episode as there’s an assassination attempt on a very important political person by a sniper in an upstairs window.

Ring any bells? Unlike that Dallas hitman, he misses and by the time he’s reloaded his musket the parade has passed by.

The object of the marksman is Anne Boleyn. She’s on her way to her coronation and upset that the crowds have stayed away. No thronging of the route to see her. “More like a funeral than a parade,”

is her verdict.

I love The Tudors. The costumes, the sets, the lighting, the heaving breasts, the way Jonathan Rhys Meyers keeps lapsing into an Irish accent. It’s great trash telly.

There are still lots of people called Thomas – More, Cranmer, Cromwell, Boleyn...

take your pick – plotting for and against Henry’s wish to marry Anne.

“I want the people to love the new queen as I love her,” he tells his advisers.

And we know from past bedroom scenes how he loves her.

This episode is a bit short on royal nooky. Henry must be pacing himself.

One wife down, one in the bed, and four more to go. Pregnant Anne is having none of it. Or Henry. He’s rebuffed not on account of a royal headache but because of the baby.

He finds another game to play. Chess.

Lady Eleanor is his opponent and he uses her naked body as the chess board (or should that be bawd). He finds novel ways of positioning the king. “That’s my first move,” he says sliding his piece over her naked back and bottom. Not long before he checkmates, with the accent on the mate, I suspect.

Special guest star Peter O’Toole is the Pope, which means he gets a nice red costume to wear and various plot points to relay. He even says: “God works in mysterious ways.”

By the end, Anne is queen and giving the palace staff a pep talk. “You will present a godly spectacle to others, attend mass daily and display a virtuous demeanour on pain of instant dismissal and banishment,” she tells them.

She tells them not to quarrel, swear, say lewd or evil things and not to behave lewdly. Sounds just like the memo the editor sent to the newsroom.

She hasn’t quite finished. “And you,”

she whispers to a footman, “don’t go to brothels.” That’s rich coming from someone known by the populace as “the king’s whore”.