Historicity in Television

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I've recently developed a special interest in historical tv series and history itself. So, how historically accurate are shows like The Tudors, The Borgias/Borgia, The White Queen, The Musketeers, Da Vinici's Demons, Rome, etc? Also, what are some of your favourite historical tv series? Mine is The Borgias.

Of course not everything we watch is accurate (or inaccurate).
I've found The Borgias to be mostly truth with some embellishments. Such as the incest, murder of Juan, Juan's battle, or the whole cannon thing. The Netflix series seems to be better with the history than the Showtime one. I do enjoy seeing things like Michelangelo's drawings and designs or other tiny things they do. The Tudors was really weird to me in the beginning because Henry has two sisters in real life, but only one in the series. Also, Anne Boleyn has dark hair. As for the The White Queen: anachronisms. Lots of them. (Rubber boots!?!?)

I've only seen one episode of Da Vinici's Demons, The Musketeers, and no episodes of Rome so I can't talk about those.

Rome is very loosely based on history - IIRC Titus Pullo and Lucious Verenius are briefly mentioned in some account of Julius Ceasar's life or something to that effect. There's really nothing known about their actual lives so the story is highly fictionalized.

The Tudors is probably my favorite historical show. From what I know about the story of Henry its reasonably accurate though I certainly don't know enough details about the real life history of it to know for sure.

The Borgias (the Showtime version) to me seemed a bit far-fetched. If the Pope and his family had done things like what is portrayed and it was widely known about at the time, it probably would have lead to his downfall. To the extent that such things happened and were successfully concealed, well, how accurate could a retelling of them really be then? In any case certainly an entertaining show and I liked it a lot, but probably about as historically accurate as "Braveheart" is (Scottsman really did set battlefields afire, dontcha know?). From what I can recall reading about Rodrigo Borgias, probably the fact that he had kids and the pope going around having affairs might have been true. The poisoning part apparently was though its unclear what they actually used - I forgot the name of the poison of choice used in the series but IIRC historians don't know what it actually was, only that it was referred to by that name. And IIRC there's no historical basis for the incest portrayed in the show.

Have not seen the others that you mentioned.

I guess you could add some other shows to your list, depending on how far back in history you want to go. Deadwood, for instance - IMHO a great, great show hat was cancelled too soon - again filled with tons of imbelishments but many of the characters based on real life people- Al Swearengen, Bill Hicock, Sol Star, Seth Bullock , Calamity Jane, George Hearst.

there can a vast difference between "history" and "historical drama". how near to real history depends on how much research was done by the author/screnwriter/director/producers, and how much of that they choose to incorporate into the project. costumes and props are often from incorrect time periods or even just a modern designer's idea of what would look good. the details of life spring forth in rehearsals or even ad-lib while the cameras roll. but the vast majority of the audience aren't familiar with the proper details anyway, wouldn't notice them or care. so unless it's explicitly a documentary (ie. totally fact-based history) then the emphasis is on the drama, the entertainment factor. after all, the point of it is to make money for the producers, so they aren't going to let such meddlesome things as facts get in the way of a good story.

of course, there are the occasional real-life historical incidents that are just bloody good stories, without the need for embellishment. but even they will get tweaked here and there to fit the screen.