If there's one thing we can rely on the BBC for, it's their simple childish faith in bodice rippers. They've already done all the Regency bonkbusters going, so now they're falling back on England's second favourite historical shaggers, The Tudors.

The series name is their first factual error, because it's actually just about the early reign of Henry VIII. Maybe they're planning sequels. Maybe they're even planning a prequel about Henry VII, and they'll rename this series Series II: A new hope. Come to that, watching characters whose life trajectory you're already familiar with does remind you of Haley Joel Osment playing a young Darth Vader. Aah, they're so sweet, it's gonna go bad, then they die.

Henry himself is mainly remembered as a fat, gouty old man with six wives most people could maybe name three of, but not many people know the back story. When he first came to the throne he was a dashing young prince beloved of all, sort of like a more virile Prince William, except beloved of all. They've got Jonathan Rhys Meyers to play him, and you'd have to say he's got the looks.

In one scene they have him playing real tennis. You may or not be aware that the Wimbledon version is an impostor, but actually the original version was popular in European courts in this period. The name tennis comes from the French tenez, which means hold or watch out, and in the game meant I'm about to serve now. Nothing to do with Dennis, which is a corruption of Dionysus. Suddenly Dennis the Menace makes more sense. Although ideally they'd have drawn Gnasher with three heads.

Real tennis has been enjoying something of a renaissance, rather appropriately, and has been picked up by our very own Prince Edward. In his other job as a failed actor he once made a documentary about Henry VIII's love of the game, in which he said that after his father's sudden death Henry had 'quite literally been catapulted onto the throne'. Unfortunately, this is incorrect.

The show does several things very well. It's beautifully filmed, it gives due weight to the minor characters without feeling cluttered, and it slips the history in naturally, save for the odd clunking moment. Of which the worst by far was the scene where Anne Boleyn's father actually calls her Anne Boleyn. It was as unnecessary as it was crass, because he'd already been introduced as Thomas Boleyn, so if he'd just called his daughter Anne that would have been quite enough. Oh well, we all make mistakes. I once told a girlfriend I didn't mind that she was sharing a house with her ex. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.

The most surprising pleasure is the way it relocates England as a part of Europe. In the populist version of pre-imperial English history everything is about us, with foreigners existing only to lay on some ships to sink. In fact, Europe was a shifting sea of alliances and antagonisms, with England a significant actor, and significantly acted upon.

Since the death of Charlemagne, the crucial antagonism in European history has always been between France and Germany. For most of its history, Germany was divided into a patchwork of princedoms (ooh, that's alliterative, I'll use that again) under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire. At various times France and Germany fought in Italy, Spain and the Low Countries. The Holy Roman Emperor at the time of the Tudors was also the king of Spain, which made the French feel a bit hemmed in, especially after Henry switched sides to Germany.

I'm not going to tell you any more. I don't have to, the BBC are going to do it for me.

Where they go very wrong, though, is in the portrayal of Thomas More. For some reason More is enshrined in English history as a noble martyr. In fact, he presided over the torture and murder of many Protestants, and his own beheading was rather kinder than the indignities he inflicted on them.

Not that most of the audience care about that kind of thing. Most of them are probably paying a lot more attention either to Meyers himself, or to the factory line of twenty-first-century perfect women climbing into his bed on one side, getting processed and then climbing out the other. My interest, though, is consistently held by two of the clothed actors. Sam Neill is engagingly venal and compromised as Cardinal Wolsey, and Maria Doyle Kennedy as Katherine of Aragon unites the personal and the political side of the story. To see the European political dimension, it helps to be aware that Aragon is in Spain.

So it's a cautious thumbs up from me for a noble effort, especially when you remember it's filling up scheduling space they might otherwise give to Help Anthea I'm Infested. It's not quite Rome, if only because none of the factory line could hold a candle to Polly Walker, but it does go some way to filling the gap until the next series.