The Serpent Queen
I can't be the only one who knows Catherine de' Medici from the guilty pleasure that was Reign. Yes, yes, I know, I did know vaguely who she was before than but needless to say, I was intrigued by this new series and was sold once I heard that Charles Dance was playing Pope Clement. The weird thing about this adaptation is that while it obviously has better production values than the CW could afford, there's still a bit of a low budget feel to it. This though could be due to the bizarre music choices that start and end each episode, much like the 2018 adaptation of Vanity Fair, or the arch knowing tone that wants to be Gentleman Jack and fails. Yet, it still has charm. The driving force though is really just waiting for Catherine to go full on serpent queen and embrace the dark side. To watch her line up the pawns and knock them all down, getting exactly what she wants. Yet she's willing to play the long game and thankfully in the meantime we have Ludivine Sagnier as Diane de Poitiers. Diane was the mistress of Catherine's husband Henri. Diane had a lot of power and spent a lot of time rubbing this in Catherine's face. But Ludivine who I previously admired on The Young Pope/The New Pope, plays a character you love to hate so perfectly she is what I envision Catherine will become, well maybe not bathing in gold, but you never know. This back and forth between the two women, and later between Catherine and her daughter-in-law Mary, is really at the heart of the show. Women vying for what power they can hold onto. Which made my mind just explode. Because I just realized that ANY royal historical drama could never pass the Bechdel Test. Did these women EVER talk about anything other than men or how they will derive power due to their male protectors? No they did not. It's all men and marriages and alliances and male heirs and men men men. Seriously, why have I never noticed this before? This is brought home even more here because all the main stars of the show are female yet everything is about the men. And the star with top billing is Samantha Morton. I'm not sure I really get how she's approaching this character. She's playing the role very quiet, very reserved, and oddly very love-struck. The weird mystical aspects are shoved off onto Ruggieri, played by one of my favorite actors, Enzo Cilenti. But Catherine is almost a nonentity. She is the spider at the center of the web, but only because she's worked her way there slowly and methodically. I think more than anything that is why this show got a second season, viewers need to see her at the height of her power, not some woman barely holding onto her marriage, or a baby factory, or a widow, she needs to seize control. And the last two episodes showed us what's coming. France and Catherine's enemies better hold on tight.
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