In the middle of the 16th century things were going haywire at the English royal court: there was nine-year-old Edward, whom they made king because his father, Henry VIII, could only have one son as heir to the throne. There is Maria, Edward’s Catholic half-sister, who is allowed to succeed to the throne six years later after Edward dies of tuberculosis, but is also dead after five years of reign. And there’s Elizabeth, a pale, red-haired teenage princess who has a crush on the man who is married to her stepmother but will later mark an age as queen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eX6uiDkpeM
“Becoming Elizabeth” is the royal drama that Elizabeth’s contemporary Shakespeare forgot to write, the unofficial prequel to Netflix’s hit series “The Crown” and a coming-of-age story that tells of Elizabeth I’s youth, which in bleak times full of secret diplomacy, greed, violence and carnage. Sometimes “Becoming Elizabeth” feels like a well-illustrated history book, but at least they dared to cast the series color-blind – and the German actress Alicia von Rittberg is a discovery as Elisabeth. (Starz play)
SIMILAR REVIEWS
Series of the week: “The Rising”
With Clara Rugaard, Matthew McNulty, Emily Taaffe
Series of the week: “Anatomy of a Scandal”
with Michelle Dockery, Sienna Miller, Rupert Friend
Series of the week: “How I Met Your Father”
with Hilary Duff, Chris Lowell, Kim Cattrall.
SIMILAR ARTICLES
Series of the week: “The Funeral”
The ARD six-parter with improvised dialogues and a great cast is terribly realistic, sometimes it veers into the slightly grotesque.
Series of the week: “The discounters”
A lot was improvised in only 23 days of shooting, most of it is actually very funny. There’s a bit too much fecal humor and cheap punchlines, but what’s really a shame is that the season ends with a gag reflex – in episode nine, while the tenth only shows a making-of.
Show of the week: “American Rust”
Sober, intense narrative of bleak life plans, wrong decisions, guilt and atonement – ultimately a drama about the decline of the American middle class.
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