A willful and self-possessed Mistress Howard in the BBC's Six Wives, first of 2 posts

Other than A Man for All Seasons and no doubt a chopped up late movie showing or two of Private Life, my first Henry exposure was the BBC's 1970 The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which i specifically remember watching in my undergraduate dorm's TV lounge. The six episodes now reside on YouTube, and in many respects hold up quite well.

The Katheine Howard episode writing credit goes to Beverley Cross (a dude named Beverley!) English playwright and librettetist who was not once but twice married to Downton Abbey fave Maggie Smith. I thought the Duke of Norfolk couldn't get any snakier than in The Boleyn Inheritance, but in this version he makes Iago look like Forrest Gump.

Seeing how he got to that height of villainy takes needs a bit of a recap:

Early in the ninety minute episode episode, while still resident at her grandmother's household (history tells us it was her step-grandmother, but the teleplay skips the "step.") Katherine, bragging about her amorous adventures to a dormitory mate, she says, "Without danger, there is no true passion." If the real life KH said and meant such a thing, maybe the way the rest of her short life played out was fun...while it lasted.

She is very intentionally and explicitly placed by her Uncle Duke "Snakey" of Norfolk in Henry's court when he is already known to be discontented with Anne of Cleves. (In Phillipa Gregory's version she is brought in as a lady in waiting at the time of Anne's arrival in England.) Snakey the Duke goes so far as to have Katherine swear an oath of fealty to him when he proposes the queen scheme. This Katherine is focused to the point of ruthlessness once her eyes have been pointed to the "prize."

Henry, meanwhile, is looking pretty rough from his festering leg wound and complains to Norfolk about boredom from enforced inactivity. The reptilian one has an answer for that! Why, he was just hanging out with his lovely young niece, freshly arrived from the country, and she would be a veritable tonic. This Henry has a Fool at his side, who provides sage Foolish counsel to leave the ladies alone, which of course Henry chooses to ignore.

Maybe there's some historical basis BUT...the Six Wives version, whose casting and makeup effects seem highly realistic, has Snakey the Duke, bringing his niece for presentation to his majesty, barge straight into the room where the King's wound is being drained by his physician. This seems an affont to decorum and the king's vanity which Norfolk would be unlikely to risk. Next, Katherine demands to take over the wound drainage, which she inexplicably turns out to be good at. I wasn't there, but seems very weird. It is in line with the less-ditzy-more-purposeful Katherine the episode presents.

Six Wives' Keith Michel, with makeup and wardrobe, is probably very close to how Henry looked and moved at the time of the Howard marriage, and speaks in the high strangulated voice that contemporaries remarked. Six Wives is no The Tudors in the sexy scene department, and the wedding night seques directly from the king checking out his bride in the bedchamber to the morning...when he apologizes for disappointing his bride. Katherine, smoothly fibs that she is inexperienced and can't miss what she doesn't know AND reassures that he has been sick and no doubt will rebound in a royal jiffy and anyhow she just adores and worships her majestic husband. Henry, re-enertized, bouds out to order a hearty breakfast for the queen, and his back turned Katherine looks...worried. She confesses to Lady Rochford that not only could the King not do the deed, he does not look so great without his clothes.

No sooner does Katherine express disgust at her poor prospects for physical fulfillment, than into the bedchamber pops Thomas Culpepper, who had earlier caught the queen's eye. I understand we have to move the story along, but the Queen had a full complement of LADIES in waiting, the English court was known to be elaborate and formal, and male courtiers, especially notorious horndogs like Culpepper, did not have an open invite to gape at the queen in her nightgown. That same morning, Katherine joins the King in receiving ambassadors and she and Culpepper make sexy come hither eyes at each other while the king obliviously talks diplomacy. OK, OK, only got an hour to move the plot but that's kind of ridiculous.

Katherine again uses her amazing medical skills to attend Henry after a riding accident, and takes advantage of his physical distress to banish his Fool, whom she dies not fool. The extortionist can be extorted: her old lover Francis Derham blackmails her into appointing him her private secretary, on the understanding that he be totally discreet. Ha! As if! He lets Culpepper know she has a past, and Culpepper starts to imagine a present. Culpepper consults the Duke of Norfolk, who tells Katherine to send Derham on a road trip instead of her idea, which is to have him executed or murdered.