The Devil's Whore
The Devil's Whore (released as The Devil's Mistress in North America) is a four-part television series set during the English Civil War, produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4 in 2008. It is about the adventures of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe and the historical Leveller soldier Edward Sexby and spans the years 1636 to 1660. It was written by Peter Flannery, who began working on the script in 1997. It was followed by a sequel series, New Worlds, in 2014. Production The series was filmed in South Africa. This caused some negative comment from reviewers but the producers maintained that they had been unable to find suitably "old English" locations in England. Cast John Simm as Edward Sexby Dominic West as Oliver Cromwell Andrea Riseborough as Angelica Fanshawe Michael Fassbender as Thomas Rainsborough Peter Capaldi as King Charles I Jeremy Crutchley as Toop Tom Goodman-Hill as John Lilburne Maxine Peake as Elizabeth Lilburne, John's wife Tim McInnerny as Joliffe Robyn Olivia as Angelica's mother Robert Coleman as Angelica's father Ben Aldridge as Harry Fanshawe Harry Lloyd as Prince Rupert Melodie Abad as Queen Henrietta Maria Ian Redford as Earl of Manchester Angelica Jopling as the young Angelica Gabriel Rybko as young Harry Robert van Vuuren as The Devil Episodes North American release The series was released on DVD in North America in 2011. Retitled The Devil's Mistress, it presents the series as two two-hour episodes. Reception Critical reception was positive, though there was some criticism of the omission of some figures and events (such as John Pym, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Sir Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Colonel Sir John Hutchinson, Henry Ireton and the Bishops' Wars) and the fictionalisation of others (such as the suggestion that Cromwell orchestrated Rainsborough's death, of Rainsborough not Sexby being a close friend of Cromwell's, Sexby's going to Ireland and the losing of his arm and Sexby's assassination attempt on Cromwell). Critical reception of the first episode was positive, with Nancy Banks-Smith of The Guardian praising Capaldi's performance and calling the drama "rollicking", "well written and acted" and marked by "a quite serious attempt to explain the underlying issues". The Telegraph also praised Capaldi, along with the lack of anachronisms and the treatment of the era's sexual politics. The Independent called it "bodice-rippingly melodramatic" and showing a tension between Flannery's "desire to get as much real political fact in as he can and the ... requirement that a primetime series should liven up the party with sexual tension and historical glamour". The Times called it "a curious beast – mannered and theatrical, with modern-looking faces speaking period dialogue in an historical dreamscape" and "If not entirely successful, ... the best sort of failure – unusual, brave and fascinating". Another Times critic criticised it for "slightly too much reading history backwards here, almost making Angelica look like a modern woman travelled back in time" and its "frankly unnecessary bedroom scenes ... slipped in, presumably to demonstrate