Gallery: The Tudors

The fourth and final season of critically-acclaimed drama The Tudors returns to screen this week.

In Season 4, 30 years into his reign and well into middle age, Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) takes a fifth wife: the stunning teen queen Katherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant). The Queen’s ‘low’ background combined with her youth and beauty, arouses a lusty familiarity in certain members of Henry’s court, most notably his handsome young servant Thomas Culpepper (Torrance Coombs), who makes no secret of his desire for the new Queen during an extended hunting trip visit by the royal entourage.

Joan Bulmer (Catherine Steadman), the new Queen’s best friend from her youth, is hired as a lady in waiting; aside from her friendship she knows too much scandalous detail about Katherine’s sexual past to be outside the court.

It’s back 8:30pm Thursday on Showcase.