So I watched the pilot of Reign. After the first 10 minutes of anachronistic folly, I stopped laughing and became, instead, quite cross. Yes, I watched the pilot and the first episode but one can only take so much torture. I’ll have to give it an award for Worst Historical Drama Ever. Was it worse than Quo Vadis? It was.
It’s billed as an’historical fantasy romance’ TV series, that billing should have warned me.
Amazing fusion of clothing
No, this isn’t a nightgown, it’s a dress that Mary wears in public. And sometimes with her underwear on the outside.
Mind you, I’d love to wear this dress myself but I’m no longer 18 (or even 28) and it wouldn’t suit. Pity.
We must have attractive actors to portray historical characters but there’s certainly a big difference between the televised and the real French royal couple.
Poor boy, he died aged sixteen, a year after he married Mary.
Here’s Mary’s teenage ladies in waiting, all dolled up with shiny hair, shiny skin and shiny non-Renaissance costumes’
But it’s not just the strange hairstyles, cosmetics and strange language, more 21st than 16th century, that got under my skin, it was the outrageous behaviour of teenage Mary and her teenage ladies-in-waiting. In one scene, in front of visiting dignitaries, they danced around the royal ballroom together, wantonly shoeless.
Even more outrageous was the constant referring to Mary as Queen of Scotland!