My Lady Jane kicks off with a whistle-stop recap of the Tudors, complete with Horrible Histories-adjacent doodles to the tune of "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived". So far, so fun.
We arrive at Henry VIII's great-niece Lady Jane Grey. Anyone with the dimmest memory of the line of succession between the murderous man with all the wives and Bloody Mary will know things did not pan out well for Jane.
But this drama doesn't want to tell the story of how Lady Jane Grey was dethroned just nine days into her reign, thrown into the Tower and beheaded alongside her husband while still only in her late teens. So this drama doesn't.
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Like The Great, the Prime Video tale takes flavours of historical events and juices them up with liberal storytelling to give Jane (Emily Bader) an alternative ending where she makes it out alive. Also, to create a society where some people can secretly shapeshift into animals.
If you've never read Cynthia Hand’s fantasy-novel source material, your response to seeing a character suddenly shrink into a bird and fly away might be, "Whaaa…?" In a peculiar piece of misdirection, the metamorphosis aspect of this reimagined Tudor timeline doesn't really feature in the trailer.
This world is divided up into Ethians (shapeshifters) and Verity (non-shapeshifting folk). This creates a bubbling us-versus-them hubbub that suggests the real-life divide of Protestants versus Catholics without boring young audiences with spiritual differences as a plot point.
And – deep breath – there's also an ailing king. And his plotting sisters. And a couple of power-hungry, status-obsessed Lords. One of whose sons is to marry Lady Jane. He also has a slimy brother. Who has some amorous congress with Jane's mother.
And there's some unrest over the persecution of the shapeshifters. And there's also some upstairs-downstairs stuff with the house staff and their own amorous dalliances. There is a lot going on.
The pick'n'mix of storylines and characters is part of the show's general jumble of an identity. Co-showrunner Gemma Burgess has described My Lady Jane as "The Princess Bride meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Blackadder."
Henry Ashton, who plays the failson of Rob Brydon's Lord Dudley, said it has "a bit of everything", listing "romance, comedy, fantasy, drama, action, sex, history." That's all fairly spot on, but there are also flavours of Queen Charlotte, Renegade Nell, The Great – which it is at pains to show us this is as risqué and edgy as.
With these diffuse and numerous targets on the archery board, this reimagining of Lady Jane Grey sees her often lost amidst the spawning storylines and side characters.
Her chemistry with Lord Guildford Dudley (Edward Bluemel), established through lots of prolonged eye contact and a slo-mo shower scene, is decently frothy. But, at least in the first two episodes available for review, Jane doesn't quite get her due.
Instead, our self-serious heroine is occasionally upstaged by funnier beats from the menagerie of accomplished character actors in her orbit, and at other times by the plummy narration of Oliver Chris, who has all the good lines she could have said. (He does also get lumbered with clunky exposition, so it's swings and roundabouts.)
The bones here are sturdy and calcium rich. The production team have worked on the likes of Bridgerton and Peaky Blinders. There are some superb performances and very funny bits. Plenty of Bezos bucks have been spent and it shows on screen.
Rob Brydon, Anna Chancellor and Dominic Cooper – playing lords and a lady of the royal court – eat up every second of screen time they're afforded. Brydon in trim tights and an impish pearl earring is a singular delight.
They're also gifted the one-liners, made better with stellar delivery that intrinsically understands the tone of this world. Honourable mentions must also go to Henry Ashton, who easily matches the freak of Chancellor's Lady Frances Grey, and Jordan Peters, who finds some fun in playing sickly King Edward.
Despite a good ensemble cast, there is just far too much going on here. My Lady Jane is the result of feeding the drama generator machine countless genres and sundry TV touchstones all at once, so it just starts spluttering out script pages which hop around from one yardstick to another at will.
In trying to be everything, it misses the mark on really delivering on anything. That's not to say you won't have a laugh watching it.
My Lady Jane launches on Thursday, June 27 on Prime Video.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
