For the past 400 years or so, history has painted Catherine de’ Medici as terrifying, ruthless, scheming, desperate and sinister: a creepy old crone mixing potions in her dark chamber. Hence the “snake queen” sobriquet and the archetypal StarzPlay thrash-rock-goth opening in which Morton – divine as always – sweeps across a checkered floor in voluminous black skirts hurling snakes. Which also happens to be a dead ringer for the two-title run of the Blackadder series. If you know, you know. The Snake Queen is a different kind of revisionist story. Funny, but in the vicious, gleefully anachronistic way of the current crop of period dramas (here’s boring you, The Great). There’s a contemporary soundtrack (Patti Smith and PJ Harvey headline) and un petit peu de fourth-wall breaking by teenage Catherine (Liv Hill, in a self-aware but wonderfully natural performance) and, later, the 1560 regent of Morton. Also lashings of elaborate costumes, profanity, misogyny, sex, violence, death and a prince who is closer to the child than Byron’s hero. The hue is very now. But one of the casualties of this relentlessly sly tone is emotional depth. I found it hard to feel deeply for Catherine, despite the fact that she was orphaned within weeks of her birth and married at 14. Sometimes, though, it works perfectly. Consider a flashback scene in which the teenage Catherine is told that she is to marry the second son of the King of France by her vile uncle, Pope Clement (Charles Chorus) – as he has an abscess removed from his “exit”. “Your marriage is arranged,” he groans as a courtier pulls a bloody scalpel from his robes. “A more flattering version of your likeness has been sent to Paris and accepted.” This is another thing about Katerina. Everyone is always telling her how attractive she is. And barren, although she had 10 children, three of whom became kings of France. The first episode covers a lot of ground as Kathryn begins to impart her life story to Rahima, who will slowly be corrupted – or is that taught to survive? – from her mentor. At breakneck speed we go through flashbacks from her birth in Florence and the death of her parents and grandmother in the convent. Here, we learn that thanks to a “powerful imagination” Catherine can see things before they happen and sometimes “make them happen if I want them enough.” She sets sail for France with a handpicked entourage, consisting of a perfumer who appears to have poisoned her father and a morally dubious fortune teller. She also has her dowry, or part of it, as Pope Clement – you guessed it – dies before paying in full. Catherine is left unprotected and falls uncomfortably in love with her husband, Henry. She has only an older cousin, Diane de Poitiers, to act as her ally in the backstabbing French court. Except that Diane, according to the words of the regency, “breaks” with Henry. It’s Diane, played for once by an actress (Ludivine Sagnier) in her 40s, who delivers the episode’s strongest lines. “A widow is the best a woman can hope for… the closest thing we have to freedom,” she purrs. “If I didn’t like Henry so much, I’d wish you the same.” The Serpent Queen is based on Leoni Frieda’s acclaimed biography of Catherine de’ Medici, which re-established her as a survivor, pragmatist and vastly underrated political negotiator. Morton, who doesn’t appear nearly enough in the first three episodes, is perfectly cast. Her Catherine is intense, tough and arch – the type who can turn eating a piece of orange into a power play. She is also – thanks to Morton doing what Morton does – frustrated, lonely and empathetic. Even so, The Serpent Queen doesn’t quite scale the heights it promises. At times, I couldn’t decide whether he was challenging historical (re)representation or giving in to it. Justin Heath’s script may embody everything that period dramas seem to be right now – irreverent, irreverent, darkly satirical – but it needs more psychological weight. As a result, unlike its namesake, The Serpent Queen is good but not great.
