'Masterpiece' BBC period drama 'goes where no other series has gone before'

The BBC's lavish four-part miniseries The Virgin Queen is being hailed as a "masterpiece" that went where no other period drama dared - inside the private passions of Elizabeth I. First aired in 2005, the £9 million co-production starred Anne-Marie Duff as the fiery monarch and a then-rising Tom Hardy as her confidant and rumoured lover Robert Dudley. Writer Paula Milne said her aim was to dig beneath the surface of history books and find the emotional truth behind the Queen's decisions.

She explained to the Telegraph: "As my research started to reveal her unravelling, tumultuous relationship with Dudley, I knew I had found the spine of the story. Smart political and psychological interpretations of her life might give the drama contemporary gravitas, but its real power would lie in its emotional truth. Losing love, for whatever reason, reaches out through the centuries to all of us who have found love and lost it."

The serial traces Elizabeth's journey from a vulnerable princess locked in the Tower of London by her sister Mary, to her accession and a reign that would define England.

Along the way, the Queen's vow of chastity is challenged by her deep feelings for Dudley - and later by his stepson, the reckless Robert Devereux.

The BBC pulled no punches. One controversial scene even imagined Elizabeth fantasising about making love to Dudley, while another showed the Queen raging with grief when she discovered his secret marriage to Lettice Knollys.

The drama did not shy away from depicting Amy Dudley's tragic death under suspicious circumstances, nor Elizabeth's crushing remorse over signing the death warrant for Mary, Queen of Scots.

Anne-Marie Duff won praise for her portrayal of the monarch- flirtatious, ruthless and vulnerable. Hardy, meanwhile, smouldered as the Queen's great passion, long before he became a Hollywood heavyweight.

The production itself was as ambitious as the story. Filmed at Pinewood Studios for £9 million in the summer of 2005, it was originally scheduled to clash with Helen Mirren's Elizabeth I on Channel 4.

Executives delayed the release, choosing instead to launch on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in the US before bringing it to BBC One.

Episode by episode, The Virgin Queen charted the key flashpoints of Elizabeth's reign - her brush with death during smallpox, the execution of Mary, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the doomed rebellion of Devereux.

At its core, the drama showed Elizabeth choosing duty to her country over personal love.

Anne-Marie Duff's commanding performance earned the series a BAFTA nomination for Best Drama Serial in 2007.

Nearly two decades on, The Virgin Queen stands as one of the BBC's boldest attempts to bring the private life of Elizabeth I to the screen.