'The Serpent Queen' Is Back and She Brought Minnie Driver

The Serpent Queen walked so that Mary & George could sashay. The bawdily mannered, edgy take on Catherine de Medici’s life as the Queen of France is back on Starz for a second season of intrigues, counter-intrigues, and a bit of black magic brewed up in the woods. Catherine is scheming and maneuvering to gain and maintain power, only this time she has the added challenges of a burgeoning religious war, raising a passel of royal teens, and an uneasy potential alliance with France’s historical nemesis, England. There are some changes to the formula, and while not every change is a sparkling success, The Serpent Queen is a waspish good time for all who love watching gifted liars and political players engage in endless games of espionage and manipulation. And what could be a better addition than Minnie Driver as Queen Elizabeth I?

Season two’s changes are a little confusing at first. In season one, the show had a framing device in the form of Queen Catherine recounting her past to the servant Rahima as a lesson in the snakey arts of getting ahead in the French royal court. This made Rahima both an audience surrogate and a deuteragonist. This time, however, the framing device is gone and Rahima, while still present in the story, is no longer a POV character; Catherine stands alone as our protagonist. What’s a little weird is that the show still engages in straight-to-camera soliloquies from Catherine and without the framing device, it comes across as a harmless but odd affectation. Most of the time, the comments Catherine shares with the audience are redundant because Samantha Morton’s acting usually does a great job of letting you know her thoughts.

There’s also a time-jump that sees Rahima recast from the younger Sennia Nanua to the young adult Emma McDonald. Instead of being Catherine’s young pupil in the courtly shadow arts, Rahima is now the Queen’s spymaster whose web of agents seems to hide everywhere. Catherine’s children have grown into a wonderfully petulant hive of bitchy young royals who might as well be the Seven Dwarfs for how simply they are defined by single traits: Spineless, Swishy, Self-Righteous, Snickery, and Snobby. The issues at play (Catherine’s mother-knows-best leadership, simmering tensions between Catholics and Protestants, transitioning France into secular statehood) are interesting, but also on the heavy side. The scenes of the royal brood lounging around trading barbs and trying on gowns function as fun little sideshows to help cut the otherwise portentous goings-on.

The Serpent Queen seems to have loosened its already-permissive attitude toward anachronism, especially when it comes to the dialogue. Maybe I’m reacting from ignorance, and I’m happy to stand corrected, but I’m almost certain no one in the Valois court used the word “wow.” It’s not a problem, but the moments stick out sometimes like when Swishy accuses Self-Righteous of “virtue signaling.” There’s a similar laissez-faire attitude when it comes to accents; most people are Irish or British, even if they’re French, with the only French accent found with the show’s resident rich nutcase Diane de Poitiers (who is back and seemingly more mellow!). There’s something charmingly chintzy about these choices and they help give The Serpent Queen a somewhat laidback vibe that provides the audience with permission not to take the story too seriously.

As an aside, either the editors are really into The Bear or there’s some obscure history about France establishing interplanetary trade with Arrakis, because wow is the color correction over-favoring blue hues. Every blue eye is so uncannily intense that it’s distracting and a little weird.

As Queen Elizabeth I, Minnie Driver is nothing short of phenomenal. I went in hoping for a performance in the tenor of Driver’s diva Carlotta from Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera, but instead, we got maybe one of my favorite spins on a “Queen Elizabeth unhinged” performance I’ve ever seen. Driver’s Elizabeth is an apex predator of statecraft who wears a chipper chatterbox mask and leans into an obfuscating ditziness to couch her razor-sharp barbs. We first see her gliding into Mary, Queen of Scots’ cell in the Tower of London with a brutally sarcastic breeziness. Elizabeth’s just shocked to hear how long Mary’s been locked up and dares her to disagree by shrugging that it’s not really up to her. Later, when meeting with the Queen of Navarre, Elizabeth claims that she has no idea where that is because she’s just so bad with geography. Driver seems to be having the time of her life playing Elizabeth like a fast-talking con artist who lays backhanded compliments on everyone whose path she crosses. The grinning, heavily powdered malice that Driver captures is electric and hilarious. I couldn’t get enough.

Elizabeth is very down for a potential trade agreement with France, but will definitely find some way to make it hurt. If she can ignite the already volatile situation brewing between French Protestants and Catholics (which now involves a cult formed by “Protestant saint” Sister Edith), then Catherine will be desperate and more likely to take less favorable terms. While they haven’t met yet, I anticipate Elizabeth will be an excellent foil to Catherine. Elizabeth seems to sense this as her eyes flare with interest when an advisor remarks that Catherine is the real power in France and will do anything to hold it. I can’t wait for them to meet. Driver is such a joy to watch and I think her performance will complement Morton’s dryer stylings well. This is a great jolt of energy for the show that’s otherwise been a little heavy on queer characters murdering people and Guise v Bourbon hijinks for my taste. Serpent Queen will benefit by giving Catherine (and Samantha Morton) a foil and scene partner worthy of her in Minnie Driver’s fabulously mean Elizabeth.