'Becoming Elizabeth' review: Engaging look at a future queen

As the title indicates, this eight-parter is all about "becoming" as opposed to being. Elizabeth I will not be crowned until 1558, when she is 25. 

In "Becoming Elizabeth'' she is indeed becoming: Watchful and brainy, but also lovelorn and frustrated, she is like any teen who just wants to get out of the house (here, the castle), or away from her parents (here, her stepmom.) If she were a 20th or 21st century kid, she'd be demanding the keys to the car (here, the reins to a horse).

Meanwhile, she's a pawn in a power game she doesn't fully understand, nor possibly could. It's brother-against-brother (one of whom she has a crush on) and a stepmother who has a keen interest in the outcome of the fraternal battle. Elizabeth seems to be the only one in the castle who is actually grieving her recently dead father — a wonder, considering he had her mother beheaded just a few years before. In the midst of that grief, another teen, Lady Jane Grey (Bella Ramsey), moves into the castle and immediately establishes herself as a rival to Elizabeth. (Alas, poor Lady Jane is also a pawn, and will lose her head soon enough too.)

What's so good about Reiss' "Elizabeth" is the prevailing sense that nobody knows anything, and certainly doesn't know what comes next. This isn't textbook TV history, but human affairs on a small scale, or at least an eye-level one. We may not recognize the historic figures scene to scene (keep your Wikipedia handy) but we do recognize those emotions and family dynamics. 

All this will be instantly recognizable to fans of Starz' Philippa Gregory adaptations — "The White Princess, "The White Queen" and "The Spanish Princess" — while "Becoming Elizabeth'' is effectively the next chapter in the series. But they'll sense something different here too. Dark, brooding, cerebral (and Chekhovian), at least like those other series, it's also irresistible.