TV's history howlers

The White Queen is the latest period drama to have upset purists

Yet the BBC’s latest flagship drama has barely started its prime-time run before it’s come under fire for a string of inaccuracies, including ropey costumes.

Viewers claim to have spotted zips on dresses, corduroy jackets, modern guttering, metal hand rails, double glazing, concrete steps and rubber boots. They are also scathing about a highly sanitised version of medieval England, where there’s not a speck of dirt to be seen and the characters have pearly white teeth and lustrous hair. 

And that’s before all the liberties said to have been taken with the Wars of the Roses.

Historians scoff that the lavish new drama depicts a battle that never took place, the ages of some of the protagonists are just plain wrong, while witchcraft has been erroneously added just to spice everything up.

All the criticism threatens to undermine the £10 million production, which is supposed to propel the Corporation back into the ranks of the world’s leading TV drama makers. It’s a crown that has slipped in recent years, notably because of the success of ITV’s Downton Abbey.

Yet The White Queen, which was filmed in Bruges, Belgium, is merely the latest in a string of period television dramas to have upset the purists by apparently revising history. Worse still, in the eyes of some, many programme-makers stand accused of downright sloppiness when it comes to the ?ne details.

A show that’s come in for particularly harsh words is another medieval romp, The Tudors. It portrays Henry Vlll as a svelte lothario when, in fact, every schoolboy knows that by the time he was middle aged the king was massively overweight. 

One of the period’s most important ?gures, Cardinal Wolsey, is shown taking his own life by cutting his throat. It might make for compelling dramas but, in fact, the clergyman succumbed much more mundanely to illness.

Also in The Tudors, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn walk through a garden past the ancient Greek statue of the Venus de Milo. The scene is set in the 1530s but the statue was discovered on the Greek island of Mylos only in 1820. Characters travel in carriages whose sprung-wheel design dates from the early 18th century.

The list of blunders is endless and there was even a website devoted to spotting mistakes in the series, which was made by a US cable television company but bought by the BBC.

Historian Dr David Starkey, an expert on the Tudor period, who said the series was riddled with errors labelled it “gratuitously awful” and a waste of licence-payers’ money.

Similarly ITV’s expensive dramatization of the sinking of the Titanic, seen through the eyes of passengers and crew, was claimed to have more holes than the doomed ship. When it appeared on our screens last year it spawned a new breed of viewers, known as ‘Titanoraks’, who spent their time combing the series for flaws.

The eagle-eyed spotted that there was just one furnace stoker on duty, remarking that the Titanic would never have got far from port without a small army of men shovelling coal for the engines. At one stage the Titanic appeared to be sailing backwards, while a Ford car shown in one scene hadn’t yet been designed by the time the ship went down in 1912, and a train carriage appears to be from the Fifties.

In another popular drama series, Foyle’s War, it’s claimed that in a scene supposed to be set in 1946 a Routemaster bus can be seen driving down the street even though this type of vehicle did not appear for another decade. Also, Foyle is a Detective Chief Superintendent, a rank not introduced until 1949.

But does it really matter if program makers rewrite history in the name of captivating drama, or fail to do their homework properly?

In Foyle's War, Foyle is a Detective Chief Superintendent, a rank not introduced until 1949

Steve Bacon, a teacher and amateur historian who has worked as a consultant for television programme makers, says: “There’s a clear difference between a historical documentary and a drama, such as The White Queen. One is factual so there is a duty to be accurate, whereas the other is entertainment so there is not.

“I think that the viewers recognise that, so they are not being misled.”

“However, when you see something that is obviously wrong, such as a zipper on a medieval dress or a drainpipe on a house, it is annoying. Those mistakes should be picked up before the programme is broadcast. 

However, Bacon claims: “Anything that generates interest in history is to be applauded.” And although The Tudors was panned for its wealth of inaccuracies, it was credited with being responsible for a surge in visitors to Henry Vlll’s Hampton Court palace.

Even Downton Abbey, which is widely revered, has not escaped the wrath of fastidious viewers and historians.

Most of the outdoors scenes were ?lmed in the village of Bampton, in Oxfordshire, but anyone looking closely at the roadside would have noticed double yellow lines in one shot. Mercifully for the Edwardians, such parking restrictions never existed back then.

There is also a scene in which the top of a UPVC conservatory can clearly be seen on a house. In another, a television aerial pokes up from a roof, while a modern street sign can also be spotted. In another Downton episode, a kitchen maid is heard humming Fly Me To The Moon  – which was composed in 1954.

Other viewers complained at the use of the word “boyfriend”, claiming it only entered the English language much later. The same goes for the use of the slang term, “get knotted”, which is not ? rst recorded until the mid-Sixties.

The White Queen, set in the 15th century, has also been ridiculed for its “Mills and Boon” style love scenes and modern dialogue. But experts have pointed out that if drama makers tried to be faithful to the language used centuries ago, no one would now understand a word.

Screenwriter Julian Fellowes,who was responsible for both Downton Abbey and Titanic, has said: “This is indicative of when a show gets noticed. Nobody nitpicks over something no one watches.

“Having been irritated at these sorts of observations of Downton Abbey, I now find them rather a compliment."

He added: “The real problem is with people who are insecure socially, and they think to show how smart they are by picking holes in the programme to promote their own poshness and to show that their knowledge is greater than your knowledge.”

It seems that’s there will always be people who are determined to pick holes, while millions of other viewers are content to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

The BBC has hit back, stating that The White Queen is not meant to be a slavish re-creation of history.

However the feeling remains that if the programme makers persist in making blindingly obvious mistakes that make us all sit up in our armchairs, the drama in question will ultimately suffer by being remembered more for its historical howlers than its plot.