Ad Links Buy a link » Danny Hooley, Staff Writer Considering that Showtime's "The Tudors" goes up against HBO's "Entourage" at 10 on Sunday nights, its apparently solid ratings performance is impressive -- and well-deserved.

Four episodes into the 10-episode first season of the new series about Henry VIII's early years on the British throne, Showtime has shown its confidence in the best way possible: by renewing it for a second season.

I came to that decision by episode three. But my initial reaction to watching that first April 1 episode was to chuckle at the almost absurd amount of sex in the show. I was almost ready to dismiss "The Tudors" as a pretty-looking soft-core pornaissance piece, but the acting and plotting compelled me to keep watching.

There sure are a lot of notches scratched into the royal bedpost by the end of that first episode, and Henry is not the only randy dandy horndogging around the political power circles of his day.

The sexual romps take on the feeling of good old-fashioned period sex farce after a while, but there's a tragic and intentionally distasteful theme going on here too. In Henry's day, pimping women was the name of the game, and everybody was playing it.

Take Sir Thomas Boleyn, who pimps his two daughters Mary and Anne out to Henry -- he ickily coaches Anne to show Henry tricks she learned in France -- as part of a plan to bring down the king's insidious adviser and political bully boy Cardinal Wolsey, played to cold-eyed, calculating perfection by Sam Neill.

Taking Anne as his new queen could cause tensions with Spain's King Charles V, though. Henry broke a treaty with France to side with Spain against France's King Francis, whom Henry has hated since Francis bested him in a shirtless wrestling match, the culmination of a rivalry that -- sheesh -- had some homoerotic undertones.

Charles V happens to be the nephew of Henry's wife Katherine of Aragon, the former wife of Henry's dead brother Arthur. Katherine is considerably older than Henry, and has not been able to produce a male heir after many miscarriages. Henry thinks God is punishing him for marrying his brother's wife. In this past Sunday night's fourth episode, one of the misused women strikes back. Henry forces his sister Margaret -- played by the always lovely Gabrielle Anwar -- to marry the elderly king of Portugal, which she does with a hilarious horror-stricken look on her face.

During the ocean voyage to Portugal, though, she plays a little rock-the-boat with Henry's handsome, trusted friend Charles Brandon, who was supposed to look after her.

And after almost giving her new husband a coronary during their semipublic wedding night consummation, the next time Margaret crawls into bed with him (privately, this time) she smothers him to death with a pillow. Who's going to be the wiser?

That little blow for female autonomy was a real kick. I should also mention that the entire cast is excellent, the sets and costumes are gorgeous, and the political shenanigans are delicious. If you haven't caught up with "The Tudors" yet, you are hereby urged to hie thee hence to Showtime on Demand at the king's, er, pleasure.

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