11 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK: Gunpowder, Treason, & Plot (2004), Part 1

  1. I remember watching this ages ago and being angry that after part one… we never see Mary again. Like her story just ends and then we’re stuck with James for another hour, who is awful.

  2. I mean, I know why a BBC production would paint her as helping plan Darnley’s murder. But it’s still frustrating because so many people do look to movies like this for at least the shape of history, and this really continues historical propaganda. Of course, looking back at my first sentence…
    But I will never get the false history of these floating ruffs! They’re ugly! They ahistorical! There is no good BBC propaganda excuse for this!

  3. Hair combs go back millennia. According to this miniseries, this simple, vital, piece of grooming technology was lost in the 16th century. Or, maybe Elizabethans liked tangled hair?
    I always assumed people put in a lot of effort to keep that from happening.

  4. As well as all the cr@ptastic costumes, that is blatantly modern saddlery. Nothing remotely like that type of side-saddle existed before the 1830s. Okay, anything more appropriate probably would have cost a lot of extra money to hire, but they could at least have thrown saddle-cloths over the saddles (which sometimes was done at the time) to hide the inappropriateness. Or have the women ride astride, which was quite normal in the 16th century if you had to go fast or over rough ground, as the sidesaddles of the day were just not safe enough for that. As for the bridles, those are 100% modern snaffle-bitted bridles with the noseband taken off – presumably to make them look more ‘primitive’?

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