Classics Revisited: 'Elizabeth R' (1972)
For weeks British viewers had been glued to their screens for new episodes of The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and period drama Elizabeth R was developed to both build on its popularity and finish telling the story of the Tudors, leading eventually to many, many offshoots of the good, bad, and indifferent variet. Happily, Elizabeth R was a brilliant collaborative effort between a team of writers (one per episode) and directors, and a huge cast of experienced, capable actors, a showcase of British talent. It’s available to stream now on BritBox. And it's certainly still worth watching, even half a century on.
This is television that requires concentration and commitment. Each of the six episodes lasts about 75 minutes and the series is full of characters who look somewhat alike (all those beards and ruffs) and whose faces have now been mostly forgotten. This is television viewing on an old-fashioned model, requiring attention from its audience in the long-ago epoch before repeats, recording, and streaming. It was so popular in the U.K. that the series was repeated immediately after its first run, and it also aired again last summer to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. PBS broadcast it in 1972 and it was the first British show to win an Emmy. Star Glenda Jackson received Emmies for Best Actress in a Drama Series and Best Actress in a Movie/TV Special.
Jackson, born into a working-class family, received a scholarship to RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), where she was told that with her unconventional features she could expect a career playing comic roles, and would probably not come into her own until she was forty. But she did go on to perform in repertory and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and then made the shift to film with starring, award-winning roles in Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969) and The Music Lovers (1970). So she was known as an artsy, unconventional actor, but was not yet a household name. The series required her to portray a fifteen-year-old in the first episode, until the Queen’s death at the age of 70 in the last. Jackson was in her mid thirties.
