FALSE WITNESS (ANNE BOLEYN)

Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII have had many incarnations on film and on television screens over the years.

Emil Jannings, Charles Laughton, Robert Shaw, James Robertson, Donald Pleasance, Richard Burton, Sid James, Keith Michell, Ray Winstone, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Eric Bana and Damian Lewis are just some of the actors who have played the Monarch.

Henny Porten, Merle Oberon, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold, Dorothy Tutin, Charlotte Rampling, Helena Bonham Carter, Natalie Dormer, Natalie Portman and Claire Foy have all depicted his second wife.

However none of the TV shows or films they appeared in have stirred up the kind of controversy that Jodie Turner Smith's casting attracted in the title role of the Channel 5 drama 'Anne Boleyn'.

When it was announced, some people took to social media to fume that Anne Boleyn was white and it made no sense having an English actress of Jamaican origin playing her.

Some even had the audacity to argue a white person would never have been cast as a black character.

That's not quite true.

Was it my imagination or didn't Laurence Olivier don blackface to play Othello in Stuart Birge's 1965 film of Shakespeare's tragedy? 

Didn't Angelina Jolie also play murdered journalist Daniel Pearl's mixed race wife Marianne in Michael Winterbottom's 2007 drama 'A Mighty Heart'?

Over the years, white actors have not been shy about portraying a variety of other races onscreen.

Rudolph Valentino played an Arab in the title role of 'The Sheikh' in 1921, while Katharine Hepburn donned prosthetic eyelids to play a Chinese heroine in the 1944 adventure 'Dragon Seed'.

Let's not forget Rock Hudson's Native American in the 1950 Western 'Winchester 73,' Charlton Heston's Mexican in Orson Welles' classic 1958 film noir 'A Touch of Evil,' Mickey Rooney's dodgy depiction of a Japanese man in the 1961 film of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and Elizabeth Taylor in the title role of the Egyptian Pharaoh 'Cleopatra' in 1963.

Turner-Smith's casting as Anne Boleyn garnered attention across the world but how does she handle the central role?

Written by Eve Hedderwick Turner and directed by Lynsey Miller, Channel 5's three part miniseries portrays Anne Boleyn as a feminist icon who is wronged by powerful men.

At the start of the drama set over the course of Anne's last five months in 1536, we are told she had been Queen for two and a half years.

She had given Henry VIII a daughter Elizabeth but he desired a male heir and since then she had suffered two miscarriages.

Pregnant again, we see Mark Stanley's Henry VIII and Turner-Smith's entertaining at court, with Anne playing cards with Anna Brewster's Jane Boleyn and Lola Petticrew's Jane Seymour.

But as the story unfolds, we see Anne lock horns with the manipulative Thomas Cromwell, played by Barry Ward, who is trying to engineer betterr elations with a Spanish Monarchy whose ambassador openly snubs Anne.

The Spanish court refuses to recognise her marriage following Henry's ending of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Cromwell spends much of his time undermining Anne with the help of Kris Hitchen's Duke of Norfolk.

Those tensions come to the fore when Henry VIII is injured after he is thrown off his horse.

Anne is horrified to witness the horse being put down, while the accident makes Henry VIII more irascible.

The Queen is particularly shocked when he flies into a temper after she observes the horse was a fine creature, prompting him to make a rather telling remark: "I have no use for an animal that won't obey me."

Anne becomes increasingly concerned that Henry VIII has a similar attitude to his marriage.

The Monarch appears to be conducting an affair with Jane Seymour and when Catherine of Aragon dies, her own position and that of her brother, Paapa Essiedu's George Boleyn becomes less secure.

Cromwell is also waiting in the wings to destroy them both and trump up the most heinous allegations to enable Henry VIII to send them to the gallows.

Seizing his moment, Cromwell is wafer to have the King replace Anne with Jane Seymour.

Because this story has been told onscreen many times, it takes a very special film or TV series to stand out.

After all, how do you better a series as excellent as 'Wolf Hall'?

Hedderwick Turner and Miller's series dutifully follows the course of events but struggles to distinguish itself from a crowded field of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn dramas.

With its snatched conversations in court and scheming in court, you feel you have seen this sort of drama many times before.

There's an over-reliance on characters speaking in extended metaphor and when the confrontations come - and there are many - there's a campy soap opera feel to them, as if Hedderwick Turner has been watching a lot of 'Dynasty'.

Turner-Smith, it has to be said, is good value as Anne Boleyn and is undoubtedly a magnetic screen presence.

She easily dominates the show and more than justifies the colourblind casting - as does Pappa Essiedu as her brother and close confidante.

While their casting amplifies the wrong done to both their characters, neither performance can help 'Anne Boleyn' overcome budget constraints that impact the way it looks and the staginess of a pretty average script.

Miller and Hedderwick Turner make some pretty odd decisions - Anne's purported stirring final speech before her execution is nowhere to be seen, denying Turner-Smith one big, final dramatic moment.

As for the rest of the cast - they dutifully churn out the kind of performances you'd expect.

Stanley stomps about like a surly, gluttonous version of LBC's James O'Brien, while Petticrew plays up the cunning behind Jane's mousey exterior.

Ward narrows his eyes and relishes the chance to play the villain.

Turlough Convery pops up as the noble, Henry Norris whose fate is sealed by a careless comment made by Anne in jest.

Amanda Burton casts a beady eye on Anne as the lady in waiting Anne Shelton, flexing her muscle as the Queen is imprisoned and her power ebbs away.

Hitchen, Brewster, Thalissa Teixera as Anne's cousin Madge, Isabella Langland as the Countess of Worcester, Aoife Hinds as Princess Mary and James Harkness as the Constable of the Tower of London, William Kingston do what is required.

If there is one aspect of the project that overcomes the budget limitations, it is Lynsey Moore's superb costume design - creating some eye catching dresses for Turner-Smith in particular.

'Anne Boleyn,' however, ends up somewhere in the middle of the pack of Tudor dramas.

Hedderwick Turner's drama neither impresses nor alienates its audience as it goes about its business.

As a telling of a well known story, it does an okay job and ian age where people love to preach on social media, Durner-Smith buries the notion her casting was somehow inappropriate.

It's just a pity that Hedderwick Turner's script doesn't quite deliver the kind of Tudor drama that would really blow your doublet off.

('Anne Boleyn was broadcast on Channel 5 in the UK from June 1-3, 2021)