Until its final act, Karin Ainouz’s Firebrand is a phenomenal and frankly overdue retelling of how the final wife of Henry VIII barely escaped her unwanted marriage with her head intact.

The real and unbelievable saga of Catherine Parr, the last of the English king’s six wives, is woefully untold, and when fictionalized, usually as an afterthought to the dramatic executions of wives two and five (Anne Boleyn and her cousin Katherine Howard, respectively), Parr is usually portrayed as a comely enough but middle-aged matron.