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Official Trailer
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Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The White Queen is a British television drama series based on Philippa Gregory’s bestselling historical novel series The Cousins’ War. The first episode was broadcast on BBC One on 16 June 2013. It will be broadcast in the United States on Starz on 10 August 2013.
Set against the backdrop of the Wars of the Roses, the series is the story of the women caught up in the long-drawn-out conflict for the throne of England. It starts in 1464—the nation has been at war for nine years fighting over who is the rightful King of England, as two sides of the same family, the House of York and the House of Lancaster, are in violent conflict over the throne. The story focuses on three women in their quest for power, as they manipulate behind the scenes of history—Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort and Anne Neville.
About The Series:
http://www.starz.com/
The White Queen is a riveting portrayal of one of the most dramatic and turbulent times in English history. A story of love and lust, seduction and deception, betrayal and murder, it is uniquely told through the perspective of three different, yet equally relentless women – Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort and Anne Neville. In their quest for power, they will scheme, manipulate and seduce their way onto the English throne.
The year is 1464, before the Tudor dynasty ruled the country, and war has been ravaging throughout England over who is the rightful King. It is a bitter dispute between two sides of the same family, The House of York and The House of Lancaster.
The House of York’s young and handsome Edward IV is crowned King of England with the help of the master manipulator, Lord Warwick “The Kingmaker.” But when Edward falls in love with a beautiful Lancastrian commoner, Elizabeth Woodville, Warwick’s plan to control the throne comes crashing down.
A violent, high-stakes struggle ensues between Elizabeth, her most fierce adversary, Lancastrian Margaret Beaufort, and Anne Neville, the pawn in her father’s power game – each woman vying for the crown.
IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/
Series Directed by:
Colin Teague (4 episodes, 2013)
James Kent (3 episodes, 2013)
Jamie Payne (3 episodes, 2013)
Series Writing credits:
Emma Frost (8 episodes, 2013)
Philippa Gregory (8 episodes, 2013)
Malcolm Campbell (2 episodes, 2013)
Series Produced by
Colin Callender….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Gina Cronk….producer (10 episodes, 2013)
George Faber….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Emma Frost….associate producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Philippa Gregory….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
John Griffin….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Eurydice Gysel….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Christine Healy….line producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Charles Pattinson….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Jan Vrints….executive producer (10 episodes, 2013)
Polly Hill….executive producer: BBC (unknown episodes)
Series Cast Summary:
Rebecca Ferguson…Queen Elizabeth / … (10 episodes, 2013)
Amanda Hale…Lady Margaret Beaufort (10 episodes, 2013)
Aneurin Barnard…Richard Duke of Gloucester / … (10 episodes, 2013)
Faye Marsay…Anne Neville (10 episodes, 2013)
David Oakes…George Duke of Clarence (10 episodes, 2013)
Max Irons…King Edward / … (9 episodes, 2013)
Ben Lamb…Anthony Rivers (8 episodes, 2013)
Tom McKay…Jasper Tudor (8 episodes, 2013)
Eleanor Tomlinson…Isabel Neville (7 episodes, 2013)
Janet McTeer…Jacquetta Woodville (6 episodes, 2013)
Juliet Aubrey…Countess of Warwick (6 episodes, 2013)
Caroline Goodall…Duchess Cicely / … (6 episodes, 2013)
James Frain…Lord Warwick (5 episodes, 2013)
Eve Ponsonby…Mary Woodville (5 episodes, 2013)
Michael Maloney…Henry Stafford (5 episodes, 2013)
Otto Farrant…Thomas Grey (5 episodes, 2013)
Rupert Graves…Lord Thomas Stanley (5 episodes, 2013)
Full cast and crew
Production Companies:
BBC Drama Productions
BNP Paribas Fortis Film Fund
Company Pictures
Czar Television
Distributors:
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (2013) (UK) (TV) (BBC One)
Starz! (2013) (USA) (TV)
VRT (2013) (Belgium) (TV)
News
The White Queen: Strong women are in store for fall TV
The Globe and Mail (8/1/2013)
http://www.theglobeandmail.
One of the more instructive moments on this press tour was my introduction to the MTV series Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, a production that had previously been off my radar. I knew that Ke$ha is a popular singer and all, but I figure life’s too short to know about all the sub-Madonna and wannabe Lady Gaga types.
Anyway, Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life is a hit for MTV and is being renewed. Thus, to accompany this announcement, we were treated to “a special message” from Ke$ha, who is currently on vacation in Greece, apparently. In the ensuing video, Ms. Ke$ha, on a boat, leered into the camera and said, “We have crazy, beautiful lives and we can’t wait for you to see more!” Then the camera moved downward as Ke$ha hollered, “Look at my boobs! Yay!” At that point, obviously, I made my excuses and left.
Not long afterward, Chris Albrecht, who runs the Starz Channel (Boss, Magic City) and put some fabulous dramatic TV on HBO earlier in his career, was introducing the new series The White Queen, a lavish adaptation of the popular, pseudo-historical novels by Philippa Gregory. By way of introduction, he said, “Women are underserved in the premium cable space.”
This is true. It is now emphatically understood that the wave of great cable dramas – from The Sopranos to Mad Men, Breaking Bad and others – are focused on men and, while there is a female audience watching these shows, there is a lack of female-centric stories about strong, complex women. I know that at this point everybody mentions Nurse Jackie, but the exception proves the rule.
As Albrecht spoke, I was put in mind of Ke$ha and it occurred to me that on a lot of your serious cable series, the essential role of women characters is this: “Look at my boobs! Yay!”
The White Queen (it comes to SuperChannel on Sept. 6) has been called “a more female-centric Game of Thrones” or, more colloquially, “Game of Thrones for girls.” Don’t take offence, I didn’t say “girls,” someone else did, but we all get the point and it’s the centrality of female figures that makes the series interesting.
It is set in England in 1464, during what is known as the Wars of the Roses, which involved various families fighting each other while claiming the throne of England. Mainly it is about the real Elizabeth Woodville (Rebecca Ferguson), from the Red rose side of the war, who indeed became White queen after marrying Edward IV (Max Irons) from the White side of things.
Phillipa Gregory was here with the cast and producers of The White Queenand declared herself mightily proud of her books and the TV production, because the stories of important women in history are being told.
“There’s almost nothing written about most of these women,” she said. “In the case of the character Janet plays, Jacquetta, there is no biography at all. The White Queen, although she’s so significant and important, there’s only one biography, and it’s out of print. To find the material about these women is really a detective job and you have to go into the historical documents looking for them. You can find their husbands. You can find their fathers. You can find their enemies if they’re men. What you can’t find is really anything about these women. And one of the reasons I’m so pleased and proud of this series is that we’re telling women’s stories.”
I was perfectly willing to go along with this. I was even willing to ignore the scathing reviews of The White Queen in Britain, where it has been airing in recent weeks on the BBC. And scathing they are: “My dears, I was so amused I laughed until my drink (tea; milk, no sugar) actually snorted out my nose,” said one review.
A constant bugaboo for British reviewers is a perceived lack of historical authenticity. The clothes are wrong, the characters’ teeth are too clean. In the case of the tea-snorting reviewer, she said she had spotted “modern drainpipes” on buildings used in The White Queen.
It is ever thus in Britain, a contrarian fetishizing of accuracy in costume dramas while delighting in the implausible, nonsensical plot twists ofDownton Abbey.
Where I depart from The White Queen and the strong-women aspect is in its use of witchcraft, magic spells and the jiggery-pokery that arises from a coven of women, including the White Queen and her mom, being descended from a river goddess or some such eerie figure. The series thus becomes silly and not about strong women manoeuvring for political power in a male world.
Gregory explained the jiggery-pokery with this: “Women had the power to tap into forces which were of the other world and, you know, this is a world before science. This is a world before the Enlightenment. All people have is herbalism and spells and hopes. There’s no proper medicine. There’s no concept of contagious diseases. I want to be inside the medieval mind, and the medieval mind believes in witches. So for the duration, so do I.”
Oh no, no, no. There’s magic and such in Game of Thrones, but it’s a fantasy, not based on real history, and there is brutal strength and formidable men. In The White Queen, the main female characters essentially declare, “I’m gonna put a spell on you!” or “Hey, look at my witchcraft! Yay!” And that doesn’t further the cause of strong women – in the premium cable space – at all.
TV review: The White Queen is less historically plausible than Game of Thrones (despite being ostensibly true)
The Independent (6/17/2013)
http://www.independent.co.uk/
Dedicated fans of Game of Thrones may have got a sense of déjà vu as they watched the opening of The White Queen, BBC1’s new Sunday-night costume drama.
It wasn’t just that there’s a faint Throney feel to the layered credit sequence for Emma Frost’s series (adapted from Philippa Gregory’s historical novels), and a faint echo of its credit music too. But the scene that followed – a fugitive running through a snow-covered forest – was very similar in mood to the first one ever seen in HBO’s fantasy epic. Was this by accident or design? Well, it must surely have occurred to somebody that an audience with a taste for late-medieval trappings and courtly plotting might find Plantagenet dynastic skulduggery to their taste as well. But if it was intended as bait, and if any Game of Thrones fans took it, I don’t think it will be long before they spit out the hook. Not only isThe White Queen unforgivably light on dragons, it also strikes you as considerably less historically plausible than Game of Thrones, despite being based on real events.
The white queen of the title is Lady Elizabeth, who we first encounter waking from a bad dream in her loft apartment, an open-plan living space with a very World of Interiors feel to it (she appears to have sourced her gauzy curtains from the Kingdom of Ikea). It’s 1464 and Elizabeth is in a bit of a spot, her Lancastrian husband having been killed in battle and his lands confiscated. Elizabeth isn’t the type of woman to mope, though. So having Googled the king’s processional route northwards, she arranges herself as a comely roadblock to plead for justice and restitution. Edward – still strictly speaking only a King Finalist at this stage of the war – pulls off his helm to reveal that he’s an absolute hottie. Despite the disapproval of his sarcastic sidekick Lord Warwick, and despite the fact that Elizabeth is just a commoner, Edward decides to have a crack at her, his lust only increased by her spirited defence of her virtue. “I have to have you,” he pants. “And if you will not be my mistress you have to marry me.”
What Edward doesn’t know is that Elizabeth does have real pedigree. “We are descended from the river goddess Melusina,” her mother, Jacqetta, tells her. “Magic is in our blood.” Jacquetta (played with a commendably straight face by Janet McTeer) has primed a local pond with an elaborate kind of lottery game, and after Elizabeth has picked one of several threads that disappear into its depths, she pulls out a crown-shaped ring. This comes in handy when Edward forgets to bring one to the secret ceremony in the woodland chapel at which the two are married, though it’s a moment you can’t help feeling might have given them both pause for thought. Her: “You forgot the ring! Is your heart really in this?” Him: “Crown-shaped? Seriously? Are you sure you’re marrying me for me?” Nobody but Edward and Elizabeth approve of this relationship. Her brothers glower furiously, still consumed with Lancastrian fervour. And Lord Warwick, who’s spent months arranging diplomatic nuptials with a French princess, spits tacks when he finds out. I’m sure it will give innocent pleasure to many, but a lot of cod had to sacrifice their wallops to make it possible.
‘The White Queen’ Draws More Than 5 Million Viewers in BBC Debut
The Hollywood Reporter (6/17/2013)
http://www.hollywoodreporter.
With an average audience of 5.3 million, the medieval drama, a co-production with Starz, won the U.K. ratings in the Sunday 9 p.m. time slot.BBC/Starz historical drama The White Queen drew solid ratings for BBC One with its premiere on Sunday, June 16, but delivered a smaller average audience than hit show Sherlock did in its latest season.
The medieval drama reached an average audience of 5.3 million in the U.K., winning the Sunday 9 p.m. time slot for the BBC flagship channel. The ratings meant a 22.8 percent share of the TV-watching audience at the time.
The figures compare with an average audience of 6.1 million to 7.9 million for crime drama Ripper Street, whose first season ended earlier this year, and more than 8 million for the second season of Sherlock.
The White Queen, a 10-episode co-production with Starz, has a summer run on the BBC flagship channel. The series is set to premiere in the U.S. on Starz on Aug. 10. The period drama is set during the so-called War of Roses in England, the 15th century conflict between rival factions for the English throne.
Based on the best-selling historical novels in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series, the show is produced by Britain’s Company Pictures. It stars Max Irons (Red Riding Hood), Rebecca Ferguson, Amanda Hale (Ripper Street), James Frain (The Tudors) and
Janet McTeer.
Filmed in Belgium with a budget of more than $15 million, The White Queen has been endorsed by new BBC director general Tony Hall. In May, he called the show the kind of “really ambitious” drama that the British public broadcaster should bring to viewers.