Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Serpent Queen’ Season 2 On Starz, Where Catherine de’ Medici Schemes To Hold Onto Power As Her Son Matures As King

In the first season of The Serpent Queen, we saw how Catherine de’ Medici rose to become Queen of France, despite a checkered background. In Season 2, Catherine does whatever she can to hold onto that power, but there’s a whole lot of other stuff going on in the kingdom, especially when it comes to dealing with the Catholic church’s influence on the monarchy.

THE SERPENT QUEEN SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “1572… Somewhere in France.” We see an overhead shot of a royal procession going down a random road.

The Gist: The French royal family is on a “Grand Tour” of the country to connect the now-adult King Charles IX (Bill Milner) to his subjects, mostly peasants. His mother, Catherine de’ Medici (Samantha Morton), is coming to the end of her time as Charles’ regent, wielding power and making decisions for the then-underage king.

As regent, Catherine has been trying to take advantage of the populace’s deep mistrust of the Catholic church and make France’s monarchy secular, which of course chaps the butts of Cardinal Charles Guise (Ray Panthaki) and his brother Francoise (Raza Jaffrey), who think the people need their spiritual guidance to survive. “Peasants are like livestock; they need to be told what to do,” says Charles.

Louis de Bourbon (Danny Kirrane) wants to negotiate a trade deal with England’s Queen Elizabeth (Minnie Driver), and the fact that she wants to talk to their sworn Protestant enemies sends the cardinal and his brother into a tizzy. Catherine agrees it should happen, when France becomes a secular state. When the Guises ask Charles what his opinion is, given that he’s now fully in power, he defers to his mother.

Charles’ wishy-washiness isn’t appreciated even within his own family, as his brother Anjou (Stanley Morgan) lets him know about in no uncertain terms.

In the meantime, Catherine goes to Ruggieri (Enzo Cilenti) to help interpret some nightmares she’s been having. He tells her that there’s “always a price” for her reaching for power, and that price is her children, of which she’s already lost four.

The de Bourbon brothers try to start backchannel negotiations with England via the intimidating wife of Antoine (Nicholas Burns), but she wants Charles to visit a local Protestant church as a gesture. In a bid for autonomy from his mother, Charles agrees to the de Bourbons’ proposal, but he goes at the same time the Guises plan an attack on the “new religion.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Serpent Queen still reminds us of Becoming Elizabeth, even more so now because Queen Elizabeth I will be a character on Season 2 (though the shows aren’t related).

Our Take: There is still a large portion of The Serpent Queen, created by Justin Haythe and based on Leonie Frieda’s book Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France, that consists of Morton being effectively evil as the power-hungry Catherine, hellbent on self-preservation and hanging onto her power. But at this stage of the show’s timeline, there’s a whole lot more going on that only tangentially has anything to do with Catherine. And we’re not sure if that’s the best thing for this show.

The second season seems to be just as much about the machinations behind France separating itself from the Catholic church and reaching out to England to start relations than it is about Catherine manipulating Charles and others in order to keep her place at the table.

It does open the show up to becoming more of an ensemble, with the de Bourbon brothers coming to the fore as a bit of comic relief, pitting them against the Guises. The way Haythe and his writers have positioned this battle actually provides stakes that are bigger than just Catherine’s greed.

But we came to the series to see how Catherine rose to the throne and how, as her son Charles ascends, how she uses her copious survival and manipulation skills to keep Charles in her pocket and be the real power in the French royal family. Because we’re going to get less of that in Season 2, we’re not sure if the season will be quite as compelling as the first one was.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but we know there will be some at some point.

Parting Shot: The Protestant church is engulfed in flames, and Charles may or may not be inside.

Sleeper Star: We like Alexandre Willaume as Montmorency, the father figure Charles never had.

Most Pilot-y Line: “He’s a wanker, Antoine, a huge wanker,” Louis says to his brother about Charles after convincing him to at least consider visiting a local Protestant congregation.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the notion that The Serpent Queen has become a show where only half is about Catherine’s machinations, half of Samantha Morton as Catherine is better than none.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.