Part of cable television’s point, at least at the higher and more exclusive end, is the freedom it grants writers to tell a story slowly, to linger on scenes and idiosyncrasies the way Tony Soprano lingered on the family of ducks in his swimming pool at the outset of HBO’s signature drama. By allowing him to do so, HBO revolutionized the form. Since then, a lot of other cable shows have learned the lesson and earned devoted followings as a result. But the new Showtime series, “The Tudors,” which begins Sunday, is going in the opposite direction. Even when it moves at a stately pace, it’s in a hurry to impress us.

The show does succeed in serving up glittering dollops of Pavlovian sensation: beautiful bodies, absurdly ornate clothes, and lots of action (jousting, dancing, stabbing, wrestling, shooting, etc.). But you may not like the way it succeeds. You may just find it cynical and manipulative. It’s as if Maxim and GQ had teamed up to “do” Tudor England, with Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) as a young, lean, impatient king — as opposed to the roly-poly, oft-married monarch of legend.

Mr. Rhys Meyers, who was last seen on American TV playing a very different sort of royal (Elvis Presley), has a pouty mouth that looks like a strangely alluring piece of botched surgery and the eyes of someone who swallowed a tab of acid and is just starting to feel the effects. He certainly looks good in the role, but “The Tudors” is so obviously a modern fantasy about Olde Englande, and Mr. Rhys Meyers himself so much like someone who was just pulled off Kensington High Street in the midst of an animated cell phone conversation, that you half expect the phone to ring from an inside pocket of one of his trendy Tudor jackets whether he’s charging around on his horse or bedding yet another pliant lady-in-waiting.

These scenes of female subjugation and ravishment can no doubt be defended on historical grounds — “So let’s hear it for history,” you can imagine the producers thinking — and, armed with that excuse, we can sit back and enjoy them thoroughly. Of course, it’s not as if the women aren’t willing — they’re bedding the Big Shot, after all. “My lord, how like you this?” asks a comely blonde in Henry’s candle-lit chambers, disrobing in front of the camera. His lordship likes it plenty — for tonight, anyway.

Spectacle is what “The Tudors” has to offer, at least judging from the opening three episodes. Its hero is callow, and his chief antagonist, the Duke of Buckingham (Steven Waddington) is easily disposed of and dies a crybaby’s death. Things also tend to move too quickly. One minute Henry wants to go to war with France and do his best Henry V impression, even if Shakespeare hasn’t written the speech yet, and the next the wily Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neill) has persuaded him to sponsor a “Treaty of Universal Peace,” whose wording sounds suspiciously like something pinched from an European Union document. The point is, Henry’s taste for war is like a light going on and off, and we’re none the wiser as to why it’s one rather than the other.

Likewise, in the second episode, when Henry journeys to France to ratify the “Treaty of Universal Peace” at a binational love-fest with the equally young and impetuous French monarch (Emmanuel Leconte), things sour rapidly as the two young men discover that, although they’ve just sworn eternal fealty, in fact they can’t stand each other. Henry, who is much taken with his own physical prowess (he’s particularly vain about his calves), foolishly challenges his taller French counterpart to a wrestling match in front of the assembled lords and ladies and soundly gets his butt kicked.

I was cheering on the arrogant Frenchie, which should be bad news for Showtime and its bad boy Brit hero. It’s a terrific scene, but an unwillingness to dwell on anything for longer than absolutely necessary robs it of its vital aftermath — namely, Henry’s utter humiliation. We see the change in him, of course, the fury. For instance, he suddenly takes a shine to Machiavelli’s “The Prince” in preference to his tutor Sir Thomas More’s (Jeremy Northam) “Utopia,” and, following the Italian sage, decides that kings should be feared rather than loved. But the courtly snickering and snide jokes that would inevitably accompany such a high-testosterone flameout are missing. Either the writer (Michael Hirst, “Elizabeth”) feared further undermining what little empathy we feel for his protagonist, or it was the result of a conference call with Showtime:

Showtime: Michael, keep those scenes moving! And more sex!
Hirst: What? I can’t hear you.
Showtime: Sex, Michael, S-E-X! You ever hear of Anne Boleyn?
Hirst: Um, yes.
Showtime: Well, get her on screen, dammit!

Poke around Showtime’s extensive press kit (delivered in a box so massive you’d have a hard time carrying it onto an airplane), and you’ll discover the network is quite open about its ambition to make “The Tudors” a kind of 16th century “Sopranos,” even if it doesn’t plan to go on for eight seasons. But it isn’t happening. The animating idea behind “The Tudors” seems to be: What would it be like to be young, hot, have incredible abs, and be King of England, so you could order everyone around and do whatever you liked? “Well,” comes the answer, “it would be amazing, wouldn’t it? I mean, just imagine the amount of chicks you could …” “Right, then let’s make a show about it.”

“The Tudors” is rife with pageantry, gorgeous interior decoration, and some of the biggest jewels you’ll see in your life. But unlike “The Sopranos,” there is little depth, let alone pathos, to the central characters, whether they’re heroes or villains or something in between. You can draw a more apposite comparison with another historical epic, HBO’s “Rome,” whose final episode last Sunday night brought an enthralling series to a grandly moving and satisfying conclusion. Sadly, “The Tudors” is not about to fill its sandals.