Nope, you haven’t misread that. Channel 5 have got an actually good period drama on their hands with Anne Boleyn.
It feels bizarre for a channel renowned for Dogs Behaving Very Badly and Filthy Britain SOS to have somehow bagged a big budget Tudor drama starring one of the best new actors of her generation as the titular queen of England, but these are bizarre times we live in. And who are we to question how or why?
Anne Boleyn is 5’s new three parter, that spans the final five months of Henry VIII’s second wife’s life before she’s beheaded for treason. The show seeks to explore Anne’s life through a feminist lens as she struggles to deal with the constraints of the Tudor society she lives in whilst facing mounting pressure to conceive a male heir. The episodes are running consecutively across three nights, with the first one airing at 9pm last night, continuing same time tonight and finishing up tomorrow.