First broadcast 11 September 2022.

Over the past decade or two there has been a surge in glossy American-funded historical dramas, thanks largely to co-production deals and improved behind-the-scenes techniques and technology. Profitable audiences have gathered around the likes of The Tudors, Vikings, and The Last Kingdom, sufficiently so that any American cable network with a few million to spare has tested the water with its own late medieval or Renaissance saga.

Starz is now stranger to the phenomenon, finding enormous success with the time travel-infused series Outlander, as well as Black Sails and Spartacus. In 2022 they launched The Serpent Queen, a series focused on the life of Catherine de’ Medici starring Samantha Morton. While the series itself was cancelled after a belated second season, its first has recently been released on DVD in Australia.

The first episode picks up on an adult Catherine (Morton), Queen of France, a week before her young son will finally be crowned as King in his own right – and ending her extended period of ruling the country in her stead. Seeking to pass the time, she takes a bullied servant (Sennia Nanua) under her wing and begins to tell them her life story.

It is a risky manoeuvre for the episode to take, since the series was in part promoted on the back of Morton’s name and she is – in the end – only really present as a narrator. What enables the episode to work as well as it does is the strong performance in flashbacks by Liv Hill as the 14-year-old Catherine, who is sent against her will from Florence to France to marry the King’s second son Henri. It is Hill that is really the star of the episode, and – one assumes – the full eight-episode season to come. That the series utilises direct address to camera on the young Catherine’s part is a master stroke; one that that both massages Morton’s narration into a more pleasing shape and gives her character a familiarity and immediacy that is irresistible to watch.

Historical facts and period detail are sculpted around this first episode, and used regularly for both dramatic and prurient effects. Catherine’s first night with her new husband Henri (Angus Imrie) is a particularly surreal affair, conducted to an applauding audience of family members and nobility. Some excellent casting accentuates the episode’s watchability, including Charles Dance, Colm Meaney, and Ludivine Sagnier – oddly the only actually French actor in a court of French characters.

As is the way with Starz dramas in general, the historical content is something of a superficial drapery for melodrama, bloody violence, and a bit of sex and nudity. Armed with a smart, knowing attitude, however, and some clever script writing by series creator Justin Haythe (The Clearing, Red Sparrow) combine to make it quite an enjoyable affair indeed. Director Stacie Passon (Concussion) ensures its a visual delight at the same time.