This falls into two halves: Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. The first half is sex and relationship stuff, with some terrific characters, especially Katherine (brilliantly played by Tasmin Archer) – sweet, sexy, thick as a plank, hungry for love, totally in over her head (I love it when Mary meets her for the first time - the expression on her face, "where did he find this one?"). There's also the smug, greedy Thomas Culpepper, so vile he rapes a peasant and kills her husband (and this apparently actually happened); Lady Rochford, who is in lust with Thomas and gets off arranging trysts between him and Katherine; the lecherous, angry Earl of Surrey (who seems to replace the "bad boy" role that was played by Charles in Season 1 and Sir Francis in Season 3 - he's a bit too old to be sexy though). This part ends with a rash of executions, including a hung drawn and quartering (of a snotty character so it's okay).
The finale as terrific tension, even though I knew the outcome – the central thrust is, will the King arrange for the execution of his last wife? And will Catherine Parr, who's been shanghaied into the marriage, be able to push through her protestant agenda? There's the torture and murder of Anne Askew (like most outlandish seeming things in this series it was the most true) and also a movingly pointless battle at Boulogne. I had no idea the Catholics came so close to taking over again during the last days of Henry VIII - Catherine Parr's place in history needs to be reconsidered.
There are some boring bits - Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk ran out of usefulness a long time ago and seeing him brood again about the Pilgrimage of Grace is dull (no wonder his wife left him - is that a new actress playing the wife at the end under the veil? He does have a good death scene though.)
The actors who play the Seymours don't kick goals in their parts - these felt undercooked. (A season 5, about the reign of Edward VI would surely have fixed this.) Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays old through attitude and performance rather than make up, except for the last two episodes.
All in all a wonderful, enjoyable series - a great shame there's no Season 5 and 6. There's easily a season each in Edward and Mary's reign - the Seymours, Lady Jane Grey, Norfolk, Bloody Mary, princess Elizabeth, etc.
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