SOMETIMES, very occasionally, a television series comes along that truly does bring history to life before your eyes. The Tudors (Friday, BBC Two) is thatrarebeast.Watchingthefirst episode of this 10-part megaproduction on the early(ish) reign of Henry VIII, the sense of stepping into the past grew so palpable itmademegiddy:suddenly,itreallydidfeel like the early 1980s.

The BBC, as a favour, has bought the programme from America's Showtime channel. Judging by the broody title sequence, the cable network started out hoping to create a bloody revisionist drama along the lines of HBO's Rome, but with more lutes. Something seems to have happened along the way, however, and what it has wound up with instead is astonishingly close to what our colonial cousins used to call "a mini-series" - the TV equivalent of oneofthosetrashy,doorstopperblockbuster novels with big gold lettering on the front, in the grand, toasted-cheese tradition of a Shogun or The Thorn Birds.

Twenty minutes in, the air was so thick with pure ham I wouldn't have been surprised to see Richard Chamberlain or Jane Seymour bursting from an oak-panelled cupboard. The Jane Seymour who played Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, I mean. Not the Jane Seymour who married Henry VIII.

The big idea is: less pomp and circumstance; more pumpy and rumpy. Rather than some fat, old, wife-murdering ginger beardy sucking a turkey leg, it sets out to reveal the young, lusting, thrusting, thin stud Henry. (Although, not that young. If the calculations I did during a jousting scene that threatened to last as long as Elizabeth I's reign are correct, we first encounter him when he's about 33. Not terribly old, granted; but, given he took the throne aged 18, not so young either).

To this end, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who is sexy the way a block of rubber is, has been cast. In the title sequence he says this: "You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of a story, you have to go back to the beginning." Which is all well and good - except the story The Tudors tells (bloke is married to his dead brother's boring wife, blames her for not giving him a son, gets the hots for Anne Boleyn, takes the huff with the Catholic church) is exactly the same as every other film and TV version of Henry's reign, including the recent, more enjoyably bloody, Ray Winstone one.

Meyers, whose role consists mainly of wearing blouses, saying things like, "We meet to consider questions of great moment," giving other men lusty shoves and laughing manfully, staring angrily, then fondling the bare bustles of any passing handmaiden, gives a fully committed performance. Historians might carp that, the least he could have done is dye his hair, as Henry's fiery red locks were his most famous feature. But historians should belt up, especially given the sacrifices Meyers has made: for one thing, he has to take his blouse off quite a lot; for another, he has to hide his Irish accent, but, like Colin Farrell, sometimes forgets; and for another, he occasionally has to wear some hilariouspuffypantaloon-shortsthatbulge nappy-like around his nethers as if he has had some kingly accident.

Stomping around thinking "sexy" so furiously his brow puckers, it's frightfully entertaining. But the performance to cherish belongs to Sam Neill, who has wisely opted to play Cardinal Wolsey as a pimped-up rap Hugh Hefner, in robes instead of a bathrobe. Neill is quite easily the best actor in the starry cast, and, fully understanding just how bad the whole thing is, throws himself into it with a sly, oily, lipsmacking relish. Watching him bobber and spin happily around in his red gowns is like watching a mischievous little hand puppet of The Pope, let loose in a Punch And Judy show.

Therewasanotherunexpectedjourneyinto the past last week with The Life And Times Of Vivienne Vyle (BBC Two, Thursday). A talkshow host in the Jeremy Kyle mode, Vivienne is Jennifer Saunders'snewsitcomcreationand,afterthe barrenfieldsofJamAndJerusalem,seesher return to the whirling media vacuum explored solucrativelyinAbsolutelyFabulous.The thingis,fouryearsonfromthehorrendously obvious Jerry Springer: The Opera, does anybody need another satire to explain that there's somethingnot-really-rightaboutallthesedaytime freakshows?

Saunders and a great cast (including Miranda Richardson as an addled producer in the vein of AbFab's Patsy, but nervier) go at it gamely and determinedly, but it feels 10 years off the beat. That said, Saunders co-wrote the series with psychologist Dr Tanya Byron, so the idea might be to build up the psychotherapy side of things as it goes on. But we should hope not.