Royal romp

The credits have hardly got over before Henry VIII has declared war and is busy exercising his royal prerogative. His prerogative gets a lot of exercise because this is the much-married monarch and he needs to audition potential brides.

The only person left out is wife Katherine, who drops a big hint by saying: "I would like to be your wife in every way". This doesn't mean she's offering to iron his shirts, more like exercise his prerogative in her bedchamber.

The Tudors is billed as a different sort of Henry and achieves that, up to a point. The dialogue doesn't contain much, "Prithee, sir, tarry a while", being more "I saved your master's arse, I want my reward".

The jokes too have a modern sensibility. "He's vain?," someone asks about a foreign visitor.

"He's French," comes the reply.

This is history but not as David Starkey knows it. It's soap set in the palace bedchamber and corridors of power rather than a cobbled street of East London square.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, with his piercing eyes and willingness to show his chest, makes a fine Henry, a king who prefers making love to making war. "We are at war with France," he's told. This cheers him up no end. "Now I can play," he says.

Occasionally, possibly more by accident than design, it connects with modern times, as when Thomas More tells him to spend money on his people rather than go to war.

Henry's a jovial soul, not easily offended. "You son of a whore," says the Duke of Buckingham, a man with no particular fondness for the king.

"Yes, that is true, your grace," smirks Henry.

He does a bit of jousting, gets at least one lady of the court pregnant and wonders if the King of France's calves are strong. They are, but not as strong as Henry's is the answer, "Majesty, no one has calves like yours". All that exercising the royal prerogative really strengthens them, I reckon.

The Tudors is colourful, expensive nonsense that plays fast and loose with the facts - purely for dramatic purposes, you understand - and never wastes an opportunity to strip a comely wench of her upper garments.

Henry prefers his creatures to be female and flightly, whereas Nick Baker likes them pale and pasty.

In Nick Baker's Weird Creatures, he's in Slovenia seeking the olm - a human fish or a blind dragon that spends its life in the darkest of caves. A bit like a film critic who spends much time sitting in darkened cinemas.

This involves Baker doing a spot of "hill-topping", which sounds like code for some unmentionable sexual practice, before descending into underground caves to search for the dragon.

This means the scenery isn't very spectacular because it's very, very dark.

Baker is not alone. This blind salamander type creature is big business with tourists flocking to see it. Fairy tales and legends are devoted to it and even a gift shop.

Baker spends the night alone (apart, I assume, from the film crew) in the caves. "It's really creepy," he says. He doesn't make matters better by talking about it. "I'm going to stop now, I'm scaring myself," he says.

The olm won't win any beauty contests, with their pale skin, long limbs and poor eyesight. These "tiny little slivers of amphibian life" have three fingers and two toes and, here's an amazing fact, can starve up to ten years, having adapted to low food levels in the caves.

They're notable as energy efficient, low cost animals. How unlike high maintenance Henry VIII who must spend a fortune on replacing the peasant blouses he rips off.