It later aired on HBO in the United States, CBC and TMN in Canada, ATV in Hong Kong, ABC in Australia, and TVNZ Television One in New Zealand.

Chief advisor Lord Burghley and spymaster Francis Walsingham plan to have her wed the Duke of Anjou, which would cement an English-French alliance against Spain.

She grants him ten percent of a tax on sweet wines and a seat on the Privy Council, of which Lord Burghley's son Robert was also recently made a member.

As Elizabeth finds her young lover's behavior becoming increasingly problematic, she draws closer to Cecil, who is named Secretary of State following Walsingham's death.

She and Cecil suspect Essex of secretly communicating with James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots and a potential successor to the English throne.

The project on Elizabeth I was originally going to be two hours and focus on her relationship with the Earl of Essex, but Mirren "felt that there should be more politics" according to writer Nigel Williams.

[4] David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Mirren's performance "is powerful enough to shatter your television screen, not to mention any notion you might have had that if you've seen one Elizabeth—Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson or Cate Blanchett, for example—you've seen them all."

He added that Irons, who he felt "has sometimes settled into craggy self-parody in lesser films [...] invests Leicester with as much depth and complexity as he can, and he is every bit Mirren's equal onscreen.

While the miniseries is visually "no match for the 1998 movie" to Stanley, she concludes that Elizabeth I offers "a richly drawn portrait of a powerful woman who is both ruthless and sentimental, formidable and mercurial, vain and likable.