''The Devil's Whore'' (released as ''The Devil's Mistress'' in North America) is a four-part television series set during the
English Civil War
The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...
, produced by
Company Pictures for
Channel 4 in 2008. It is about the adventures of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe and the historical
Leveller soldier
Edward Sexby and spans the years 1636 to 1660. It was written by
Peter Flannery, who began working on the script in 1997. It was followed by a sequel series, ''
New Worlds'', in 2014.
Production
The series was filmed in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
. This caused some negative comment from reviewers but the producers maintained that they had been unable to find suitably "old English" locations in England.
Cast
*
John Simm as
Edward Sexby
*
Dominic West as
Oliver Cromwell
*
Andrea Riseborough as Angelica Fanshawe
*
Michael Fassbender as
Thomas Rainsborough
*
Peter Capaldi as
King Charles I
* Jeremy Crutchley as Toop
*
Tom Goodman-Hill as
John Lilburne
*
Maxine Peake as
Elizabeth Lilburne, John's wife
*
Tim McInnerny as Joliffe
* Robyn Olivia as Angelica's mother
* Robert Coleman as Angelica's father
*
Ben Aldridge as Harry Fanshawe
*
Harry Lloyd as
Prince Rupert
* Melodie Abad as
Queen Henrietta Maria
*
Ian Redford as
Earl of Manchester
* Angelica Jopling as the young Angelica
* Gabriel Rybko as young Harry
* Robert van Vuuren as
The Devil
Episodes
North American release
The series was released on DVD in North America in 2011. Retitled ''The Devil's Mistress'', it presents the series as two two-hour episodes.
Reception
Critical reception was positive, though there was some criticism of the omission of some figures and events (such as
John Pym, the
Earl of Bedford, Sir
Thomas Fairfax, Sir
Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles,
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Colonel Sir
John Hutchinson,
Henry Ireton and the
Bishops' Wars) and the fictionalisation of others (such as the suggestion that Cromwell orchestrated Rainsborough's death, of Rainsborough not Sexby being a close friend of Cromwell's, Sexby's going to Ireland and the losing of his arm and Sexby's assassination attempt on Cromwell).
Critical reception of the first episode was positive, with
Nancy Banks-Smith of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' praising Capaldi's performance and calling the drama "rollicking", "well written and acted" and marked by "a quite serious attempt to explain the underlying issues". ''
The Telegraph'' also praised Capaldi, along with the lack of anachronisms and the treatment of the era's sexual politics. ''
The Independent'' called it "bodice-rippingly melodramatic" and showing a tension between Flannery's "desire to get as much real political fact in as he can and the ... requirement that a primetime series should liven up the party with sexual tension and historical glamour". ''
The Times'' called it "a curious beast – mannered and theatrical, with modern-looking faces speaking period dialogue in an historical dreamscape" and "If not entirely successful, ... the best sort of failure – unusual, brave and fascinating". Another ''Times'' critic criticised it for "slightly too much reading history backwards here, almost making Angelica look like a modern woman travelled back in time" and its "frankly unnecessary bedroom scenes ... slipped in, presumably to demonstrate her liberated nature", whilst overall praising the episode as "gripping", "cutting" and "lively" and in particular noting that Simm played Sexby "strikingly". The ''
Radio Times'' also noted it as "an intelligent, richly textured labour of love". John Adamson, a non-stipendiary by-fellow in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge, criticized the series as "a cartoon-strip version of the Civil War".
Awards and nominations
The series won in the Best Drama Series category at the 35th
Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Awards (2009) and Riseborough won in the Best Actress Category.
Michele Clapton won at the
BAFTA Awards, in the category of
Best Costume Design.
At the 2009
Royal Television Society Programme Awards, the series won three awards, Drama Serial, Actor: Female for Risenborough and Writing: Drama for
Peter Flannery. The same year, at the
Royal Television Society Craft & Design Awards, Julian Court won Lighting, Photography & Camera – Photography – Drama and Nadine Prigge was nominated for Make Up Design – Drama.
References
External links
*
*
Review, Leicester Mercury
{{DEFAULTSORT:Devil's Whore, The
2000s British television miniseries
Fiction set in the 1630s
Fiction set in the 1640s
Fiction set in the 1650s
Fiction set in the 1660s
Television series set in the 17th century
Channel 4 miniseries
2008 British television series debuts
2008 British television series endings
2000s British drama television series
English Civil War films
Channel 4 television dramas
Television series by All3Media
British English-language television shows
Cultural depictions of Charles I of England
Cultural depictions of Oliver Cromwell
Cultural depictions of Henrietta Maria of France