Digression: The White Queen, Episode 1

What do you mean, you haven't been watching it? What's that? You were afraid the costume would be hopelessly inauthentic? Then you're in the right place! Reading this simple synopsis could save you hours...

Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeir armour's made of plastic
Their doublets are elastic 
They really are fantastic
The Yorkist fam-i-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

Sir John Grey: I'm going to die because my armour's made of plastic.
Yorkists: So's ours!
Elizabeth [wakes up]: I was only dreaming, so who gives a -
Son [waking up]: Mummy - why can't we afford hats?
Elizabeth: Because some bugger nicked our land. Let's talk to the king.
King: Well hell-OH! I'm the king of discount sofas. Look - I'm wearing one as a doublet! And one plastic spaulder.
Elizabeth: I'm so poor I have to wear the same zip-up kirtle in scene after scene.
King: Let me help you with that by writhing around in tight-fitting quilted acrylic britches.
Elizabeth: I say, your majesty! How come you can't afford a hat either?
Edward: Let's get married by an anomalously untonsured friar!
Elizabeth: Woohoo! Now I'm queen I can afford a powder-blue crushed acrylic velvet gown! Meet my family... [several hundred Woodville children emerge from a back room in a manner reminiscent of 'The Sound of Music' and launch into a chorus of "Doe, a deer, a female deer, slaughtered under a full moon at midnight and its entrails spilt onto a pentagram"]

Edward: Oh.
Random Woodville: I don't trust him. And I'm so advanced I wear shirts from the future. And no hose, apparently.
Edward: Behold my palace, with its pointy-headed guards, inaccurate banners and random man with barrel.
Barrel dude: Mar-nen!
Duchess Cecily: Ah. Peasants.
Jacquetta: What's up with your head, weirdo?
Edward: Don't mind my mother. And that's my brother Dickon. He has his own disabled parking space...

*I am indebted to Mr Brian Wainwright for permission to use this lyric, which he posted to a Facebook Group dedicated to the period, in which the series was being discussed. I doff m'pointy felt cap in his direction.