Henry VIII's wives come and go in 'The Tudors'

THE SHOW "The Tudors"

WHEN | WHERE Sunday at 9 p.m. on Showtime

REASON TO WATCH Fourth and final season

CATCHING UP Henry VIII's (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) third wife, Jane Seymour (Anita Briem), dies; Thomas Cromwell (James Frain) plots his reformation; and an uprising on the Scottish border is brutally put down by Brandon, First Duke of Suffolk (Henry Cavill). Cromwell pushes Anne of Cleves (Joss Stone) on Henry because she's a Protestant, but Henry can't actually see her (she's in France, where war with England is brewing), and is smitten by a small and overly generous portrait instead. He's repulsed when he meets her, and Cromwell's matchmaking - and political - days ebb, then cease. His head is removed, and Anne is sent packing.

WHAT SUNDAY IS ABOUT In May, viewers met the latest paramour of the king's - one Catherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant), a giggling 17-year-old. She's in an early frame shot Sunday, covered in rose petals and not much else. Meanwhile, the court is seething, as is its wont, as war with France looms, and a newcomer at court, Howard, Earl of Surrey (David O'Hara), arrives with some power and disdain for all the king's henchmen.

Henry is blissfully in love - or maybe blissfully in the throes of carnal desire. Catherine is hiding her own libidinous past and also has a secret admirer - Culpepper (Torrance Coombs), a "gentleman" of the king's privy chamber.

MY SAY There's a famous grade-school memory trick that has helped generations of kids keep track of the fate of each of Henry's unlucky wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. . . . You don't have to count your fingers to figure out where poor bubble-brained Catherine is headed, pun intended. But knowing the fates of wives or courtiers or noblemen or noble ladies - too easy in the age of Google - is hardly the pleasure of this series. It's the gorgeous period costumes and sets, the excellent (largely) British cast, and creator Michael Hirst's sense of history and pageantry.

BOTTOM LINE Only four seasons old, "The Tudors" feels like it's ending too soon - although Henry is running out of wives.

GRADE A