Jodie Turner-Smith Shines in an Uninspired 'Anne Boleyn'

For the better part of 500 years, we've been obsessed with the story of Anne Boleyn. Queen of England in her own right, her life is largely remembered for the facts of her death - and her inability to give her insane husband King Henry VIII a male heir. But the real Anne was witty, well educated, and ambitious, a usurper queen who was hated by many in her time but also happened to be deeply religious and a key player in bringing the Protestant Reformation to England. Her husband was (at one point anyway) so in love with her that he basically broke the world for her sake, and her daughter Elizabeth Tudor would go on to become one of the greatest monarchs in all of history.

Anne was a study in contradictions and source of cautionary tales, a woman who feels familiar to us now because she wanted so much then -- so much that she was not supposed to have. She was probably not the proto-feminist so many of us long to think of her as, but she was remarkable in ways that still deserve to be both remembered and celebrated today. On some level, it feels as though if we just tell her story often enough, somehow it will turn out differently. This time, a woman who was so ahead of her time will somehow not be ground down by a world that trades in misogyny, will not lose her life to the whims of a powerful man who had simply tired of her.

But things sadly remain the same as they ever were in the new three-part miniseries Anne Boleyn - for all that the series made waves with its decision to cast actress Jodie Turner-Smith in its lead role, the AMC+ drama is remarkably bland and uninspiring, offering little in the way of new insight into Anne's life and failing to even be a particularly entertaining recreation of her death.