In 2019, some forty-seven years since its first airing, “The Shadow of the Tower” feels like “Game of Thrones” without blood, booze, boobs, rape, battle scenes, dragons, prominent female characters, butts, zombies, and CGI. Oh, but it does have historical accuracy. There’s something really interesting seeing this “game of thrones,” specifically King Henry VII’s game for the throne, play out. Dramatized ingenuity is far more impressive than workshopped ingenuity. Even if they’re the same ingenuities. It’s kind of like Borges’s Don Quixote.

But it’s also might play more accessible these days because of “Thrones.” Amid everything else, “Game of Thrones” did teach modern audiences how to listen to plotting, something no one had been able to do since the British in the seventies with stuff like “Tower.” And they couldn’t hold that audience. At least not in America.

Anyway. This first episode introduces Henry, played by James Maxwell, who seems like he could go Bond villain at any time, making the whole thing a little disconcerting, and it introduces all the people pissed off or happy about him all of a sudden invading, killing the king, taking the throne. There are the armed insurrection guys plotting, there are the middle-of-the-road guys trying to figure out if they can work with the new king, there’s the princess—Norma West—who was promised to marry Maxwell when they were kids only she never thought it’d happen—trying to figure out her feelings on everything.

Now, “Tower” is bad at Bechdel. West’s got nothing to talk about but men and boys. Sure, it’s a patriarchy but… even with the limited expectations for a seventies dramatization of fifteenth century royal history, “Tower” doesn’t give West a lot to do except fret. West’s able to do something with it, which is impressive as hell, but it takes a while.

The episode’s got a good pace. Rosemary Anne Sisson’s teleplay is like a great lecture, the way she paces and plots the conversations and reveals. There’s no action, of course, no battles, barely any corpses, barely any crowds. It’s just about the cast providing a reasonable facsimile of their historical figures, reasonable but to the general viewer and, presumably, the informed. I didn’t do fifteenth century English history; it’s all going to be a surprise to me.

It’s very interesting.