It’s France, 1560, and the queen wants a new maid for her son’s forthcoming coronation. Which queen? The Italian “commoner” regarded as the offspring of the most despised family in Europe who, in a truly astonishing transformation, became one of the most powerful – and vilified – women of the 16th century. The one who introduced tobacco, ladies’ drawers, broccoli and ballet to the French, and was said to have instigated the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, in which the entire Protestant Huguenot population of Paris was murdered in a few hours. We’re talking about Catherine de’ Medici, referred to in the show’s title The Serpent Queen (StarzPlay) or, in TV shorthand, the one played by Samantha Morton. “Don’t look in her mirror,” a servant hisses at Rahima (Sennia Nanua) – the poor innocent chosen to carry today’s royal tray. “It could suck the soul right out of you.”
For the past 400 or so years history has painted Catherine de’ Medici as fearsome, ruthless, scheming, desperate, and sinister: a creepy old crone mixing potions in her dark chamber. Hence the “serpent queen” sobriquet and archetypal StarzPlay thrash-rock-goth opening in which Morton – divine, as ever – sweeps across a chequered floor in voluminous black skirts spewing forth snakes. Which also happens to be a dead ringer for the series two title sequence of Blackadder. If you know, you know.
The Serpent Queen is a different kind of revisionist history. Funny, but in the vicious, gleefully anachronistic way of the current crop of period dramas (here’s curtseying at you, The Great). There’s a contemporary soundtrack (credits roll to Patti Smith and PJ Harvey) and un petit peu de breaking the fourth wall by the teenage Catherine (Liv Hill, in a self-knowing yet wonderfully natural performance) and, later, Morton’s 1560s regent. Also lashings of ornate costumery, swearing, misogyny, sex, violence, death and a prince who’s closer to manchild than Byronic hero. The timbre is very now. But one of the casualties of this remorselessly sly tone is emotional depth. I found it hard to feel deeply for Catherine, despite her being orphaned within weeks of her birth and married off at 14.
Sometimes, however, it works brilliantly. Consider a flashback scene in which the teenage Catherine is told she is to wed the second son of the king of France by her vile uncle, Pope Clement (Charles Dance) – as he gets an abscess removed from his “exit”. “Your marriage has been arranged,” he groans while a courtier brings forth a bloody scalpel from his robes. “A more flattering version of your likeness has been sent to Paris and accepted.” That’s another thing about Catherine. Everyone is always telling her how unattractive she is. And infertile, though she went on to have 10 children, three of whom became kings of France.
Episode one covers a lot of terrain as Catherine begins relaying her life story to Rahima, who will slowly be corrupted – or is that taught to survive? – by her mentor. At breakneck speed we move through flashbacks from her birth in Florence and the death of her parents and grandmother to the convent. Here, we learn that thanks to a “strong imagination” Catherine can see things before they happen and sometimes “make them happen, if I want them badly enough”.
She sets sail for France with a hand-picked retinue, comprising of a perfumer who appears to have poisoned her father and a morally dubious fortune teller. She also has her dowry, or part of it, as Pope Clement – you guessed it – dies before paying up in full. Catherine is left unprotected, and inconveniently falling in love with her husband, Henry. She has only an older cousin, Diane de Poitiers, to act as her ally in the backstabbing French court. Except Diane is, in regency speak, “jousting” with Henry. It’s Diane, for once played by an actor (Ludivine Sagnier) in her actual 40s, who delivers the episode’s most powerful lines. “A widow is the best thing a woman can hope to be … the closest thing we have to freedom,” she purrs. “If I weren’t so fond of Henry I’d wish you the same.”
The Serpent Queen is based on Leonie Frieda’s lauded biography of Catherine de’ Medici, which rehabilitated her as survivor, pragmatist and wildly underestimated political negotiator. Morton, who doesn’t appear nearly enough in the first three episodes, is perfectly cast; her Catherine is intense, cruel and arch – the type who can turn eating an orange segment into a power-play. She is also – thanks to Morton doing what Morton does – frustrated, lonely, and empathic. Even so, The Serpent Queen doesn’t quite scale the heights it promises. At times, I couldn’t decide if it was challenging the historical (mis)representation or falling back on it. Justin Haythe’s script may embody all the things period dramas seem to be right now – irreverent, foul-mouthed, darkly satirical – but it needs more psychological heft. As a result, unlike its namesake, The Serpent Queen is good but not great.
