Wolf Hall BBC2

[Nick Armstrong]

#43....I could tell your 'Mmm' was mocking....

Hmmm

No, I think I was being serious!

[jean]

...But what about the third book, as yet unpublished, does this mean a sequel? ...

I think she intends to take us up to Cromwell's own execution.

[Richard Tarleton]

Decapitation is, how can I put this, a recurring theme in her books. A Place of Greater Safety is full of them.

[DracoM]

Internalisation canNOT be delivered on TV by lingering camera shots. Character needs an interlocutor of some sort.

And given that Cromwell was one of history's most Machiavellian movers and shakers - so to have acres of screen time taken up with the actor's face is simply not helping. UNLESS you are simply going for another Grand Design series with dialogue, wallpaper, candles, woodwork and Tudor costume. Erm.........not sure that should be the point - a sort of historical costume anorak eye-candy?

IMO, it's doing the Mantel novels few services. Will be pushing up her sales OK. Is that the point....? Ahem.

As said before, I genuinely believe this would have been far better on radio.

[vinteuil]

... nope. Can't be doing with it. Nor can Mme V. She has read the books; I have not.

Slow, lush, uninvolving. In the end, uninterested.

And an unfeasible amount of candles

I'm with aeolium here -

I'm afraid I thought it dull and ponderous, for all the money and star actors lavished on it. I think it suffers anyway from the fact that the Tudors have been done to death on TV and film, in drama and documentary, and it's hard to make anything seem fresh about the story. I agree that Rylance, in anything, is tremendous to watch, and there were solid performances from old stagers like Bernard Hill, Anton Lesser and Jonathan Pryce as a super-slim Wolsey: I preferred Orson Welles in A Man for All Seasons, a play and a film which I still think is the best dramatisation of anything about the Tudors, with a script as sharp as yesterday's was blunt.

[jean]

...Ahem...

I knew you'd say that.

[eighthobstruction]

... nope. Can't be doing with it. Nor can Mme V. She has read the books; I have not.

Slow, lush, uninvolving. In the end, uninterested.

And an unfeasible amount of candles




I'm with aeolium here -

But,....surely your not going to miss the bit where they process about in adorned boats with minstrels on the Thames....(if production budget large enough)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well the slow enigmatic silence worked for both Guiness and Oldman playing George Smiley and Rylance has it to a tee ....chess games start slowly usually as momentum and attack await the building of positions ...

for me it needs to neither be faithful to presumed historical fact nor Hilary Mantel's novels; i take it as a work in its own right just as with Tinker Tailor and Smiley's People ....

i find the concept, manifestations, and diagnosis of motive deeply problematic in any case ... and am grateful for the lack of any interlocution .... repeated watching is the only way to make something of it in such terms ...

it is a supreme delight for me

[Nick Armstrong]

slow enigmatic silence ...Rylance has it to a tee

Doubly amazing to me since my main engagement with him prior to this was two trips to see the majestic Jerusalem in the theatre, where as the central character Johnny "Rooster" Byron, Rylance delivered the biggest, boldest, most violent and funny performance I've ever witnessed - again, mesmerising and exhilarating but at the diametrically opposite end of the acting spectrum. The guy's phenomenal.

[mangerton]

It was Hmm .... as in, I have listened, absorbed, stored it away in my mind for future thought, but won't comment aloud. (At least, that's the way I heard it ....

H'mm.... (three dots to indicate Careful Consideration). That sounds very like Cranmer's "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest". Does he feature in these books/this series?

To take up Caliban's point about dark tv screens, watching in a darkened room (which I usually do for "serious" viewing) probably helps.

[french frank]

Blast! I suppose I have to look

[jean]

H'mm.... (three dots to indicate Careful Consideration). That sounds very like Cranmer's "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest". Does he feature in these books/this series?

He does. But up to now he is rather nervous, caught up in events beyond his control.

His mastery of English is not yet in evidence - nor does he yet look like someone who might face execution courageously.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But,....surely your not going to miss the bit where they process about in adorned boats with minstrels on the Thames....(if production budget large enough)

Weren't they called "Treets" in those days?

[Stanley Stewart]

Viewing Wolf Hall is a truly mesmeric experience; the silences, in particular; the prevailing sense of fear and suspicion and getting to grips with a world which moved at a slower pace, except at the King's command. Thesps at the top of their game, all registering even before they even come to the fore!

To date, Mark Rylance dominates as Thomas Cromwell. I first saw him as Richard II at The Globe, in the late 90s, and was glad to record his performance in a subsequent TV transmission and admire his natural command of the open-stage. A triumphant and nuanced interpretation, even finding irony in the drama of the deposition scene - I'm getting ready to watch it again when I recover from a sobering scarring after viewing Part I of "Shoah" last weekend. Like Hamlet, I lost all my sense of mirth for the next few days.

[gradus]

The pace seems exactly right to me and the avoidance of story-telling and scene-setting explanations voiced by the characters is precisely what is needed to stimulate the imagination, though plainly not everyone's. Imv fine work by all concerned.