If it hadn't been for reading this website and starting the book, before setting it aside until after this series, I think I would probably have been lost as well. It was an odd directorial decision to opt for the total immersion approach and mess around with the chronology in episode one, was it some kind of test so that only the 'right kind of viewers' would stick with it?

Honestly, there's no pleasing some folk.

But why is no one asking who did for Little Purkoy? What do you mean, who's Little Purkoy? 

"Maybe his paws slipped" indeed.

See Doggy Thread.

I'm still fuming about how More has been presented. Let's remind ourselves of Bolt's More:



Eamon Duffy is fuming too: he's "had it up to the eyeballs" with Mantel.


http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/18/wolf-hall-recap-episode-five-cromwell-saves-henrys-life


The eminent historian Eamon Duffy, who has evidently had it up to the eyeballs with Wolf Hall, fired off a furious letter to the Times last Friday. “Rumours that More tortured suspects are dramatised in Wolf Hall. But More, who died rather than swear a false oath, indignantly insisted that no one in his custody had suffered ‘so much as a flip on the forehead’. By contrast, Cromwell’s role in the starvation and disembowelling of blameless Carthusian monks for refusing to recognise Henry as head of the Cchurch is undeniable.”

Cromwell inflicted these atrocities well after the period of this serial. But, Duffy reminds us, he was a man who did such things. History testifies to this..

And in the same youtube, Temp - at 20 seconds - there's a bluff, hearty King Hal, with power and presence, aggression and arrogance ....in abundance. Rather different from the limp little harry currently being portrayed by Damien Lewis. But hey, that's historical interpretation for you.

Not so. Damian's copied Shaw - see this week's Episode 5 when he gets really cross with TC.

The crossed hands bit in the angry scene - "it confuses the pain" - was genius. Mantel's I think. The rest really did happen - although no one seems certain what Henry and Cromwell were really playing at. The whole thing may have been staged.

Well sorry but I'll have to wait until I can buy the dvds or Wolf Hall gets screened in France (dubbed into French ...aghhh!, no!).

But dammit, it is only Hilary Mantel's interpretation - a shrewd historical author's fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.  I have to say, from my current position of ignorance, that it must be very powerful drama, and I mean that most positively, if, as it seems many people are actually doing, they are re-evaluating history on the basis of HM's dramatic interpretation ... how he looks, how she acts, what's their agenda, did you see how their eyes met! (oh please!). Let's not forget that Wolf Hall, like Man for All Seasons is principally drama ... it's not history.

He's gone all aggressive and arrogant in ep. 5, MM, after his bump to the head and a bit of CPR from TC.

I'm rather disappointed in Mantel's women, apart from TC's SiL they are portrayed as having little charm or much personality and so I find it hard to fathom their attractiveness to the men. AB in this is all spite and petulance with none of her reputed intelligence or charisma, I'm surprised she lasted 1000 minutes.
The men seem much more rounded characters. In fact, can I discern a dislike of women in Hilary? She certainly fell for TC.
Oh dear, I am enjoying it but I wonder if not carrying the book in my head affects my judgement since I have only what is actually on screen to ponder?

Meles meles wrote:

Well sorry I'll have to wait until I can buy the dvds or Wolf Hall gets screened in France (dubbed into French ...ahhh!).

But dammit, it is only Hilary Mantel's interpretation - a shrewd historical author's fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.  I have to say, from my current position of ignorance, that it must be very powerful drama, and I mean that most positively, if, as it seems many people are actually doing, they are re-evaluating history on the basis of dramatic interpretation ... how he looks, how she acts, what's their agenda .... Let's not forget that Wolf Hall, like Man for All Seasons is principally drama ... it's not history.

And what is history?

I hope you stay for an answer, MM. No one else seems to have.

ferval wrote:

AB in this is all spite and petulance with none of her reputed intelligence or charisma, I'm surprised she lasted 1000 minutes.

Agreed.

I have no answer Temp, and I freely admitted that while I thought  Damien's Henry a bit flat, that judgement was only based on the still publicity shots plus a few promo youtube clips. ...  so I'm really not best placed to answer. But I have seen, and not just here, people trying to re-evaluate history (in itself never a bad thing), but in terms of how they understood  the characters in Wolf Hall (a dramatic televised fiction) to be interacting, and how they, with only a 21st century viewpoint, would have felt.

I'm rather reminded of discussions I had with people at work many years ago when the series, 'Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson' was being dramatised on the BBC.  My secretary loved the drama, looked forward to it each week and always wanted to discuss it. And then late on in the dramatisation, probably just after the penultimate episode had been shown, she said: "... they are so much in love, I'm sure he'll never put her aside, do you think he'll really abdicate? ... I don't!"

....errr....

Meles meles wrote:

I have no answer Temp, and I freely admitted that while I thought  Damien's Henry a bit flat, that judgement was only based on the still publicity shots plus a few promo youtube clips. ...  so I'm really not best placed to answer. But I have seen, and not just here, people trying to re-evaluate history (in itself never a bad thing), but in terms of how they understood  the characters in Wolf Hall (a dramatic televised fiction) to be interacting, and how they, with only a 21st century viewpoint, would have felt.

Well, how do we "evaluate" or "re-evaluate" history? As I asked yesterday - what is history; what is truth? Answers on a postcard please, as Minette always used to say.

But you may be interested to read this, MM. It's from the preface of John Guy's 2000 biography of Thomas More:

"Now that I have finished this book, I no longer believe that a truly historical biography of Thomas More can be written. The sources are too problematic. Historians cannot legitimately "invent" what amounts to a relatively high proportion of their facts, while undue conjecture irritates the reader. The task is to excavate, and thereby to expose, the substructure of evidence on which scholars must construct their interpretations. We need to see with greater clarity not only the different portrayals that have arisen to debate Thomas More, but to recognise the limits of what we can and cannot know about him, laying bare those points of transition between the sustainable and the conjectural."

And I, I have to admit, am still far too fond of conjecture - about More, Cromwell, or any of the other players in the drama. (And by the drama I don't just mean "Wolf Hall".)

PS But Stephen Gardiner was a snake: I think all the sources confirm this. Everyone hated him, with the possible exception of young Edward Courtenay. I think I have mentioned already on the Doggy Thread that the young Duchess of Suffolk (Brandon's teenage bride whom our Norfolk describes as "startled") called her pet spaniel Gardiner and delighted in calling him to heel. I wonder how she told him off when little Gardiner tried to poo on the royal flower beds. Even Henry was amused by her dog's name. Lord knows how she got away with it.

I'm up to episode three now and Cromwell has still as yet to do any actual work - though lots of turning up in the same room as Yosser Hughes and a male model type who everyone listens attentively to even though his script has been written by a cliché generation app. The model apparently wants to marry another product of the same app (set to spite and fury mode) and for some reason this jobless lad's opinion on the matter is important. The poor cardinal emoted himself to death for some reason in episode two (and then rather spookily reappeared briefly in episode three for no explicable reason) so that's one person less for Cromwell to loiter around. However he's now taken to filling this void with thumping people for no apparent reason and doing dream interpretations for the model written for him by Russell Grant. This can't end well. Especially if that creepy old dude Sir Thomas Muggeridge gets his way. He's a bad sort - you can tell from his spectacles.

Marvellously authentic, though. Especially the candles.

I think nordmann is with Cunk and Shitpeas on this one.

Let us remind ourselves of their comments, helpfully posted a while ago by ferval:



Oh well. And there was me trying to be dead brainy and scholarly quoting John Guy. I never learn, do I?      

I liked his specs, especially the way they folded away so neatly.

I was going to go off in a Wolf Hall huff, but I can't resist posting this. I've just been googling 15th and 16th century spectacles and I found this. I think it's wonderful. It's Saint Luke of all people, by Conrad von Soest - 1403.

Here's something for you, Temp.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05471yp


and for everyone, the 2004 Globe production.

By episode six I hear that things just go completely weird ...

Thanks, ferv.

I don't think I've posted this*: I think it is a superb review of Wolf Hall (the book, not the BBC production):


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n08/colin-burrow/how-to-twist-a-knife

There was no shortage of bastards in the early 16th century, but Thomas Cromwell stands out as one of the biggest bastards of them all. His surviving correspondence shows the energy, efficiency and brutality of someone born to get things done. Whenever he says, ‘I remain still your perfect and sincere friend,’ you can be fairly sure he is about to terminate the addressee’s career with extreme prejudice...


The pleasures offered by Wolf Hall are substantial and deep...Mantel’s chief method is to pick out tableaux vivants from the historical record – which she has worked over with great care – and then to suggest that they have an inward aspect which is completely unlike the version presented in history books. The result is less a historical novel than an alternative history novel. It constructs a story about the inner life of Cromwell which runs in parallel to scenes and pictures that we thought we knew. She works particularly well with witnesses like Cavendish, who are both extremely vivid and slightly unreliable. Such sources enable her to suggest that history, even when witnessed first-hand, can mingle fact and mythology: that gossip, misunderstanding, anecdote and deliberate distortion play a part in the processes of living as well as in the process of recording.

PS At one point, our favourite aristocrat, the Duke of Norfolk, cries to Cromwell: ‘Damn it all, Cromwell, why are you such a . . . person?’  As Colin Burrow points out, Wolf Hall certainly makes Cromwell a person, and a fascinating one; but it also makes him a little too much of a person. The Duke of Norfolk probably gets the historical Cromwell more or less right: ‘“You . . . person,” he says; and again, “you nobody from Hell, you whore-spawn, you cluster of evil, you lawyer.”’


PPS * This thread is getting rather like the various Richard III discussions we have had - here and elsewhere - over the years. As they get longer and longer, one forgets what one has posted/given links to.


EDIT: Oh, nordmann's just posted something. Haven't read it yet.

Caught episodes four and five today and things are really hotting up. Muggeridge was executed, apparently for talking a lot when he'd promised to keep silent. The dog committed suicide. Cromwell at last has found a job - keeping lawns flat by walking on them a lot. And the model fellow after a bang on the head has started turning into Syd James as the king in Carry On Henry. I didn't spot any crows, though the candles as ever have been magnificently realistic.

Yosser Hughes nearly believed he'd become regent at one point but, as usual for the poor sod, the opening didn't materialise.

Oh, come on, nordmann, you can do better that that, although you are presumably just too bored to try.

I thought Philomena, Barry and/or His Eminence would have mentioned how everyone goes out boating all the time: even Anne Boleyn - just before she goes into labour with the ginger "dumpling"  (have to admit that choice of word jarred a bit) - has a bit of a jaunt up and down the Thames.

Watched Man For All Seasons again last night. Golly, it was good. Orson Welles was an excellent Wolsey - all sweaty and glistening like a monstrous suet pudding. Brilliant. Much better than Jonathan Pryce.

Leo Mckern or Mark Rylance?

I think Rylance is superb, but Leo for me.

I agree - when Saint Heretic-Burner found himself up against Rumpole then he knew his goose was cooked.

On a serious note - the Wolf Hall series is a classic case of missed opportunity, something I find myself saying more and more in relation to modern drama presentations on TV and film in general. Mantel delivered a series of salient snapshots of Cromwell's career, each one informed by its predecessors so that the reader - well, this reader - gradually found himself not only drawn into how Cromwell's mind worked but almost imperceptibly lining up alongside the sod as his house of cards is meticulously constructed and then, towards the end of Bring Up The Bodies, as it begins to become obvious to Cromwell and the reader how catastrophically fragile it all is, as the man's vulnerability increases with the illusion of his safety. Not quite sympathy, but some empathy, and that was Mantel's overriding achievement with her books. In the TV series Cromwell's motives have not been examined, let alone explained. The scene where Henry emasculated Cromwell in front of everyone, the first time Tom the Blacksmith feels himself exposed in such exalted company, should have been followed by Cromwell seriously examining his career choice and determining that what he needed was more protection against these bastards, even if this meant he would be acting treasonably in the background to achieve it. Instead we had Cromwell moping about for a few weeks and the ghost of Thin Wolsey telling him (and the viewer) that the whole crisis for Cromwell hinged on the success or otherwise of securing a son for the king. Mantel had taken this crisis into much more intelligent and insightful depths, one thing that makes her writing fascinating, and this was left out of the drama.

Lovely sets and locations, some great acting, its most memorable lines intelligently reproduced faithfully from Mantel's text. The story as presented however is disjointed, lacking much insight that the viewer doesn't bring to the production themself, clumsily scripted in crucial scenes most of which unfortunately include a rather hapless Henry or an equally hapless Anne. Disappointing.

Lovely sets and locations, some great acting, its most memorable lines intelligently reproduced faithfully from Mantel's text. The story as presented however is disjointed, lacking much insight that the viewer doesn't bring to the production themself,

Thank you expressing my thoughts, as the viewer bringing not a lot to it, so well. Perhaps if a little, or indeed a lot, less had been spent on settings and costumes etc and the savings used to produce more episodes per book, it would have been more satisfying.

I know I keep comparing it to the Le Carre adaptations but I feel it is illuminating in illustrating how a complex story requires time and space to explore. Not that they were not themselves reduced for the screen; I heard an interesting snippet on Today telling that, before TTSS was filmed, Guiness spent two weeks closeted with the script writers personally taking a blue pencil to screeds of the dialogue and replacing those with silence and facial shots. It seems with WH the same technique has been attempted but with significantly less success.

I can't wait to read the book though.

nordmann wrote:

In the TV series Cromwell's motives have not been examined, let alone explained. The scene where Henry emasculated Cromwell in front of everyone, the first time Tom the Blacksmith feels himself exposed in such exalted company, should have been followed by Cromwell seriously examining his career choice and determining that what he needed was more protection against these bastards, even if this meant he would be acting treasonably in the background to achieve it. Instead we had Cromwell moping about for a few weeks and the ghost of Thin Wolsey telling him (and the viewer) that the whole crisis for Cromwell hinged on the success or otherwise of securing a son for the king. Mantel had taken this crisis into much more intelligent and insightful depths, one thing that makes her writing fascinating, and this was left out of the drama.

Mmm. I confused by some of that. Cromwell's motives not examined or explained? His motives are explained all the time - non-verbal communication and all that. Rylance is a master at this.

The emasculation scene I do have problems with - in the book and in the TV production. It was beautifully acted, but then it was possibly beautifully acted on April 18th 1536 too.  Dare I say this? I think Mantel - brilliant and intelligent and everything else that the woman undoubtedly is - got it wrong, and so do you with your time scale. Cromwell was very well aware that he needed "more protection against these bastards": that's why four weeks after this incident he had wiped out the entire Boleyn faction (except Wiltshire - he survived physically, but was to all intents and purposes a dead man by the end of May 1536). TC did not mope about "for a few weeks" at all. The process of destruction swung into action only twelve days after the "confrontation" with Henry - on May 1st 1536 when the arrests began. I would argue that Cromwell and Henry had already decided on what was to be done and that the whole of the farce of Chapuys being forced to bow to Anne, followed by the "emasculation" scene of April 18th (all of which did really happen) was actually a "performance" (Schofield's word), carefully planned and staged by Henry and Cromwell. Chapuys was being manipulated, but not perhaps in the way he thought. The French too were being manipulated: Francis' ambassador, the bishop of Tarbes, was all agog after the "astonishing sequence of events" and had an interview with Henry the very next day. Henry seems to have been enjoying himself immensely - his usual game of playing the French off against the Spanish.

But back to Cromwell being distressed and moping. As Schofield points out, it is significant that nowhere does Chapuys, who reported minutely on all these events, even hint that at this time Cromwell's position was imperilled. Far from it. He was not isolated, not in any danger, and in fact had much support in the council for a policy of rapprochement with Charles V. He had Henry's support for that too; although neither the king nor his minister wanted the king's real wishes/plans to be too obvious - to Chapuys, to the French ambassador - or to the Boleyns. What was coming up was to be a surprise for everyone - except Henry and Crum.

Masters of disinformation - the pair of them?

Temp, I think you are making my point for me. This is a TV serial, be it one with aspirations, and it has to work on its own terms as a stand alone experience without the viewer having necessarily read the book or holding a masters in Tudor Studies to fully appreciate the action. As such, it has flaws despite all the positives, mostly due to compression and, in my mind, some infelicitous casting choices.

ferval wrote:

Temp, I think you are making my point for me. This is a TV serial, be it one with aspirations, and it has to work on its own terms as a stand alone experience without the viewer having necessarily read the book or holding a masters in Tudor Studies to fully appreciate the action. As such, it has flaws despite all the positives, mostly due to compression and, in my mind, some infelicitous casting choices.

I'm sorry. I do get carried away by it all, don't I? As I was told on Friday:  "We don't all eat, sleep and breathe the Tudors ***."

And also on Friday I was amazed to learn that there are some people in England who have not been watching Wolf Hall. How can this be?

In the book Cromwell identifies the undoing of Anne, who he believes now is scheming to her own ends and to the detriment of his and the king's plans, as his new and only worthwhile priority. This is the avenue back into unassailability but one that will demand his total focus. In contemplating the challenge ("dreaming Anne's dreams for her") he is back as a young soldier and appreciating how the value of brutally knocking in a locked door will sometimes exceed the approach of the locksmith, laboriously picking at the lock. It is then that he remembers Liz making her silk braid and when asked to slow down so he can understand the process replies that to do so would make it incomprehensible and impossible to her. This scene in fact is the final one before the plot, and Cromwell's own career, takes on the sinister ruthlessness for which he is chiefly remembered. The lockpicker will now be brutal when it suits, whether it is to flush out treason in the kingdom or in the queen makes no difference anymore.

Which begs the question - why did they balls up that brilliant sequence of insights, carefully laid down by Mantel, so disastrously in the TV adaptation? Besides the chronological, and indeed logical, rearrangement it has deprived the viewer who hasn't read the book of the chance to accompany Cromwell on that crucial part of his inner journey towards what he would become in posterity's eyes. Instead the memory of Liz and her braiding appear way too early, actually while he is recovering from a serious illness and effectively out of the loop (in Mantel's version the last time he has time to think objectively of his career thus far), long before he has been made (or agreed) to bring his administration into seeming crisis, and therefore either a meaningless dream sequence or an inference not shared by Mantel that Cromwell had so early resolved to become a monster if that was what was required.

There are many other examples of messing about with Mantel's original intentions. Suffice to say that almost all the really significant moments in episode five, "Crows", happened long after Mantel's "Crows" were flown and we had moved into "Angels" and "The Black Book". Even the naming of the episodes is misleading.

It disappoints - why mess with something that was not only well written but actually written almost like a screenplay itself? One would have thought that Rylance might have enjoyed playing a character (as in the book) rather than what appears to be a motiveless mope whose only chance to relay those lines not retained from the original screenplay is to forlornly look into middle distance. Your ability to discern all these historical and personal epiphanies on his political journey from those eyes marks you out as a singular viewer, Temp, but it is generally agreed that there is a problem with TV shows which have singular viewership.

Mmm - as ever, you write with such easy confidence, nordmann, that one is (almost) convinced that you must be right.

However, I would suggest your judgement is too harsh: you are being terribly unfair to Peter Straughan here. I do agree that the BBC episode titles are confusing; and yes, it was a mistake - an odd one - to lift the silk-weaving memory from the end of The Black Book chapter. Otherwise, Straughan's adaptation has been remarkable.

And what a task he was given! Faced with turning those two massive novels into six hours of TV drama, I should simply have turned and run.

Episode 5 covered most of Bring Up the Bodies: Falcons/Crows/Angels and The Black Book. Some going that; and much of the dialogue of Episode 5 was taken - more or less - from that last chapter. I've just re-read it. Lifting dialogue wholesale from a first-rate author is usually an excellent idea for a scriptwriter: it's what made the Andrew Davies' adaptations of Austen, Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot so good.

I'm sorry, but I really do think you are nitpicking here - but ferval obviously agrees. No word from Priscilla - yet. Mantel herself seems happy enough with it all.



Rylance a "motiveless mope"? Honestly, I am baffled.

ferval wrote:

As such, it has flaws despite all the positives, mostly due to compression and, in my mind, some infelicitous casting choices.

Who did you think was miscast, ferval? I thought Jonathan Pryce was not a convincing Cardinal.


PS I'm not sure whether to be flattered or huffed by being called "singular". It can mean strange or odd.

Nitpicking am I? Well actually you are right - even a bad adaptation such as this one is infinitely better drama fare than most that is dished up to the great unwashed these days, so picking nits just about sums it up.

But there is much that is odd about this drama, that was just one example. And in fact the biggest oddity is the idea that the whole thing should be shrunk into six hours. You might compliment the adapter on achieving this goal with enough recognisable chunks of the original work to keep even the author happy. And you might compliment Rylance on his sterling efforts in communicating complex inner thought processes through his doleful stares, averted gazes and well timed blinks. But personally this was skill which when utilised in this case has simply encouraged the much-hyped notion that what was achieved at the end of it all was the best possible adaptation, whereas to me it simply advertises what might have been, and serves therefore as a reminder through almost every second of this well crafted production of what we are missing, not what we should be pleased to have been offered.

Pryce was a convincing cardinal if one never had encountered Wolsey in literature or drama before. The same can be said of Lewis and Foy in their roles. Others, like Gatiss and Hill have been allowed present more conventional versions of the characters they portray. The result, especially with a meticulously revised Cromwell gluing the whole thing together, is a strange hybrid indeed - neither conventional nor revisionist but seemingly arbitrarily reinvented, and for no apparent reason - least of all one concerned with being at least faithful to the story as originally presented by Mantel. When she departed from convention in the books, which she frequently did, it was to present insights through this new angle into a character who otherwise is easy to dismiss as one-dimensional and whose true motives are now unfathomable. She at least dragged the reader down a bit into these depths whereas Rylance is asked to simply hint at them through meaningful looks, trite dramatic flashbacks and ghostly apparitions. A very unsatisfying mix, and actually even more unsatisfying if one has read the books.

If one is both flattered and huffed then I suppose this might be termed "fluffed". I apologise for fluffing you. If I find any nice nits I will send them to you to cheer you up.

Well it will be finished on Wednesday.

NB immediately afterwards on BBC4, Wolf Hall, the inside story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05471yp

ferval wrote:

I know I keep comparing it to the Le Carre adaptations but I feel it is illuminating in illustrating how a complex story requires time and space to explore. Not that they were not themselves reduced for the screen; I heard an interesting snippet on Today telling that, before TTSS was filmed, Guiness spent two weeks closeted with the script writers personally taking a blue pencil to screeds of the dialogue and replacing those with silence and facial shots. It seems with WH the same technique has been attempted but with significantly less success.

I wonder why we disagree so much about this, ferval? Perhaps it is all about how different people respond to non-verbal clues - which of course has nothing to do with intelligence. I am always being told that I "read too much" into things. I probably do.

For me Straughan's adaptation is "a miracle of elegant compression": for you and for nordmann it is nothing of the sort. We must agree to differ.

You mention the famous BBC adaptation of Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Arthur Hopcraft managed that in 315 minutes. Andrew Davies was allowed 375 minutes for Middlemarch. Those magnificent serials from the 1980s that so many of us remember with real nostalgia - Brideshead Revisited and I, Claudius - were great, long, sprawling things in comparison: Jack Pulman managed to cover the two Graves' novels in 648 minutes, while John Mortimer's Brideshead was just a tad longer - 663 minutes. They would be done in "Seasons" these days, I suppose.

Perhaps we should have had a Wolf Hall Seasons 1 to 6, perhaps? Too expensive? You need a backer like Showtime to do that: imagine what they would have done with it all. (Nude scenes with the Duke of Norfolk, anyone?   )

Trike wrote:

 


Well it will be finished on Wednesday.

Amid cries of relief all round, I shouldn't wonder. The damn thing has caused - or very nearly caused - some serious fall-outs.

PS nordmann's nitticisms have had me fretting all day. Thank you for that, nordmann. I have been worrying particularly about Charles Brandon's enormous beard (see picture), and what was possibly lurking in its luxuriant depths. Thomas Seymour had a big beard, too (see picture). Big, bushy beards seem an odd fashion choice for the times: lice infestation was a real problem. But beards were trendy.

Here is a lice comb from the Mary Rose, complete with some genuine Tudor nits:

 Ugh.


Charles Brandon and beard.




Thomas Seymour and beard.



PPS Nearly forgot. Some comments from Peter Straughan himself here:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/entries/931d701d-c880-4cb8-b4d0-3be289f9350b

Temps remarks that I have not said my say. My appreciation of this production has been so well expressed that I saw no need for anything by me. There are, of course some nits to pick with who feel a need to blur the image. I can understand if , say, ferv dislikes Damien - try as I might once I have taken a dislike to  a performer I rarely change my opinion whatever they do; and I do try.

I guess in a 6 hour production one can tell the tale/tales. Most playwrights manage in far less time without a weeping wailing audience that it ought be longer. That a production before a camera needs very fine tuning by quality directors and cast; a good actor will have had in depth discussion about how a role is to be projected. Thus Henry V111 by Damien will not be  his choice alone - and what is good for camera is not for stage. A Rylance stage performance draws from a different well of his talent.  To act without discussion - and real direction - is a worrying business actually. One is never sure why.
As for preconceived notions, I recall my mother's generation who  thought that Charles Laughton's Henry was him and no other could replace that.  Just as what we know of the real Stephen Hawkin will not be the same for all; younger people will now latch onto an actor's impression of him.  This cannot be done for Churchill or Hitler because  there is so much documentary of them. No one can give a totally convincing performance that will replace the truths of them that we know.
To produce a work on the Tudors which negates many clichés that many have accepted as historically sound is a refreshing trend. Let the nits then pick away all they like on lesser issues but for me this TV production of Wolf Hall is a ground breaker and I  thank them profoundly for it. Of course it can also be said of me somewhat as in Alice, 'But who are you, anyway?'

You've not read the books then?

But I have, well two anyway. So? I've also read a wodge of other books made into plays and films and also some of the original tales that Shakespeare used as creative fodder. And I've lived through the Battle of Britain and heard related music and read many poems and l have pondered over war artwork - so I say again. What point are you making? Make it a sharp one as I am feeling as thick as a board today and know how you love to fletch.

I actually agree with you that it is refreshing to see a drama based on the second Tudor king's reign which challenges the clichéd treatment we are used to from such fare (though I still contend that Mantel's books were even more challenging in that respect). However - and this is the juiciest nit to pick here - the opportunity to do so brilliantly was lost when, having secured a large budget, a very competent leading actor, an extremely sympathetic team of set designers and location acquirers, an excellent wardrobe, as well as raw material which itself had been written with a pacing and style that lent itself admirably to adaptation, then went ahead and produced something unevenly paced, which deviates from the source material for confusing and often inexplicable reasons, and in which the casting of some key roles seems based more on their visual impact rather than their acting capabilities (not to mention a Wolsey cast solely to procure a big name actor on the bill). And all compressed into a viewing time which necessitated excising a lot of what made the original books worth reading.

Good, in other words, and definitely worth watching but a production all the same that missed out on the chance of being great, or at least as good as it could have been even if only some of the above mistakes had been addressed in production. I believe the play based on the same material, forced to compress even further the raw material into a suitable length for theatre, avoided all these pitfalls by essentially making it into two one-man show productions (which after all is how the books read too, all the other characters and events presented as recounted experiences by Cromwell and logically split as narratives between his rise to power and then the period in which power begins to influence his actions to the point of corruption). Ben Miles does have a supporting cast but there is no doubt through whose eyes the narrative is being filtered.

Sharp enough?

Yes. And clearer. I wondered what you had been on about. Now I know. Ah, so you say here is a wasted opportunity to do better..... sounds like my school reports. The rest of your TV, film viewing must be an agony then. Nothing to say to it because you have chewed your dish and found it wanting. I, on the other hand have relished each morsel with admiration of what they managed to project.... and all this set against what the public wants/expects which is, on the whole something that only needs  a spoon. That it has been so well received is the most important facet because a message has been sent that not only can quality be achieved but it is better respected than perhaps was understood by  rating fuelled departmental  minds.
You think it could have been greater - that, we must allow. Time will be the test when the flutter in our admiration settles.

I doubt that it is a work that will be adapted again for TV, so this is what makes the lost opportunity all the more poignant. It may be done again as a film but that is something in the current age which can only lead to some foreboding for those of us more interested in history than we are in cod-pieces.

The stage production however is bound to be resurrected in the future and by all accounts - even those of some notorious nitpickers whose winkles I am not worthy to curl - it is definitely a formidable pair of evenings.

Ah -  electric stage moments. I had forgotten what those could be like. Age and circumstances have made opportunity to induge in such fare but a memory of excited youth. And I'm not sure if there is much of it about anyway. Yes, and I can see how it would cap the TV drama. Yet this production has pinched  more than a few nerves and  new work will be matched agains it which is no bad thing.

Of course things can always be "done better"; and, that said, perhaps some texts are best left on the page. Even a work specifically written - by a master - for dramatic production can disappoint in some ways, even when interpreted by the best directors/actors in the world. Charles Lamb famously said that King Lear was "impossible to be represented on the stage"; and Harold Bloom, more recently in 'Shakespeare - The Invention of the Human' , argues for a moratorium on stagings of Lear in favour of solitary readings. The vision of the artist - novelist or dramatist - may be great, but often the consummate realisation of that vision is impossible - outside the individual reader's imagination.

I'm not comparing Mantel to Shakespeare (although her Wolf Hall, the novel, has been compared to Middlemarch*), but perhaps a completely satisfactory dramatisation/production of her two novels was impossible. Should we all have confined ourselves to a "solitary reading" of Wolf Hall and Bodies then, for fear lest any dramatisation would fall short of some impossible ideal? I don't think so. What we should have missed! And such negative thinking - the demand for "greatness" (who decides?) - would paralyse the efforts of those who work in theatre, film and TV, the artists who do try - however imperfectly - to bring alive great writing. They may aim for greatness, but hope to be simply good. Perhaps we should be more generous - and more gentle - before we rush to criticise those who do their best? We are not all geniuses, after all. I'm just grateful for something exceptionally good these days: greatness on TV or at the theatre - in any of the performing arts for that matter - is very rare. Always has been.

But my main problem with the two books and the dramatisation has been Mantel's wonderfully sympathetic presentation of a man who was - by most accounts - a complete bastard. How Rylance's "little boy lost" performance has tugged at our heartstrings - how we long to understand and console this hero who has suffered so much, overcome so much! Utter tosh. In reality, Cromwell was a ruthless pragmatist, maybe not an immoral man, simply, like all good Machiavellians, an amoral one. "Nothing here is personal, madam," we will hear him say tonight. Nothing personal - beautifully put. Sums up everything.  And, although TC and Henry did succeed in deliberately misleading Chapuys on many occasions, the ambassador was not a complete idiot: his judgement of Cromwell was pretty good:

"Cromwell's words are very fair indeed," Chapuys wrote to his master, the Emperor, "but his deeds are bad, and his will and intentions beyond comparison worse."

PS All the bird/flying/wing imagery in Wolf Hall and Bodies has fascinated me - a murder of crows, anyone? Found this lovely bit of verse, penned by George Cavendish (Wolsey's gentleman usher) just after TC became Henry's "mooste secret and deare councellour". I wonder if Mantel picked up on it? I bet she did.

With royal egles a kight may not flie;
Allthoughe a jay may chatter in a golden cage,
Yet will the eagles disdayne his parentage."

* Diana Athill said: "A stunning book. It breaks free of what the novel has become nowadays. I can't think of anything since Middlemarch which so convincingly builds a world."

Just been reading what John Stow had to say about Cromwell - how TC in 1532 pinched twenty-two feet of his neighbours' gardens when he and his household took over two properties within the precinct of Austin Friars (Cromwell's lovely home which we have all viewed, candlelit so nicely, over the past few weeks). He converted the two into one dwelling - just as the super rich do with London property today - and then had landscaped a huge garden, having moved his neighbours' fences without warning or compensation. What is worse, our motiveless      malignity then put the house of Thomas Stow (father of the famous antiquarian) on rollers and moved it - - then promptly started to build a new house on the land that had thus been vacated! An outraged John Stow recorded for posterity how all this had happened "ere my father heard thereof: no warning was given him, nor any othere answere when hee spake to the surveyors of that worke but that their Mayster Sir Thomas commanded them so to doe."

It is an indication of Cromwell's widely recognised influence at Court that nobody dared utter so much as a whisper in protest: "No many durst go to argue the matter," observed Stow, "but each man lost his land, and my father payde his whole rent...for that half that was left."

Stow could not resist adding about this man, who so obviously took after his father in being the neighbour from hell, "The suddaine rising of some men causeth them to forget themselves."

He were a wrongun all right, our Crum - whatever Mantel - blessings upon her -  would have us believe.

Could do better? I'd like to see any of us here try.

Superb bit of drama - Anne Boleyn's death actually left me all shaky. That's your proper catharsis, that is.

Cromwell is like Faust now - he's caught in a trap, with Henry doing a great job as Mephistopheles.

Gosh, it was good.

Yes, it was. As was the discussion afterwards. There was minimal direction too, apparently. Two memorable hours - family discussion afterwards enriching it further. I suppose we can expect a shit-nit response when it hits Norway. Sad, that.It would have been such a pleasure to have reached  a rich mile stone on the road to quality drama production with shared perception.

The series hasn't "hit" Norway yet at all - but thanks to the wonder of the interwebs some smart Norwegian-based shitnitters can still see it.

I liked the last episode - thanks to the hops and skips that preceded it the pacing actually matched more or less the same piece of the narrative in Mantel's book. This allowed even the mediocre actors to shine a bit. The good thing is that if they can retain their production team and budget (and I assume they have already secured the rights), and if Mantel's third instalment is as the first two, and if they retain a six-episode format, then the next series should be superb.

Crum was indeed a bastard - he was in every bad sense a thoroughly modern career politician - and Mantel is steering him towards that conclusion on the part of her readers, I noticed. Whether doe-eyed middle-distance gazing Rylance can quite follow the character there however is a moot point, though I look forward to finding out.

Now Priscilla, there is a nice bowl of lovely warm water and some scented soap left for you in the bar's loo. You know what you need to wash out.

Isn't technology a wonderful thing? It even does  virtual mouth washes. And something nordmann liked about the production of WH too. My mug overfloweth with pleasure and hastened my days to being put in a care home as I giggle into my computer. Awaken Temps to another almost blue day. 

According to the aftermath discussion, it was thought it would be much harder to write a sequal that was not, in a sense, sullied by the TV production..... well, Mark and Peter thought that. Wrong word there perhaps, can't recall what they said - affected probably...... but sullied is such a lovely word. I hope it is lavender flavoured soap.

Isn't Sully Prudhomme a great name? He was a French poet, I think.

Going to watch the after-WH discussion now.

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies, P., but you can be relied on to cheer me up. Shit-nit counts as one of your greats - of which there have been so many over the years.

I salute you, ma'am.

Carbolic of course. One can't be too careful with potty mouths like that.

The sequel "The Mirror and the Light" is on the way in book form and will bring Crum up to his own date with the Royal Weight Loss programme, Tudor style. My point is that if this book is written in the same style, with the same pace, and as well as its two predecessors were written - and if the BBC elect to adapt it in a series of six episodes - then it has a fair chance of being less likely to be screwed up in that respect as some episodes in this series certainly were.

I have pointed out several things that were good about Wolf Hall as a TV series, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone yet to see it. I just refuse to go all wobbly-kneed and gushing about it - there were several things that marred it too. One thing in fact that I haven't mentioned but should also be pointed out - Rylance's portrayal invites sympathy whereas Mantel's depiction of the man invited empathy. It is a crucial difference (and one not repeated in the stage production, I hear), and I wonder how much of that was a conscious decision on the adapters' part not to create too hard-headed and unsympathetic a main character in what would be a flagship production for the state broadcaster. If such was the case then they got it seriously wrong. Cromwell's many victims must be doing a passable impression of high-bypass turbofans in their graves, I reckon.

But, hey ho. As long as one forgets the actual historical character and forgets what one experienced reading the books then it stands as drama in its own right and a cracking good story that even the Americans might buy.

The execution scene, I thought, was exceptional. The way the executioner removed is shoes and distracted Anne before despatching her with a single stroke was excellent.*

Against this, I am sure I heard Starkey say about Anne's execution that the swordsman stood directly behind her and slowly built up the momentum of the sword until it was moving fast enough for a killing stroke.

* not on youtube yet, will post it up when it is.

nordmann wrote:

Carbolic of course. One can't be too careful with potty mouths like that.

Well, better potty than petty, chuck.

Trike - I don't think I've read anywhere that the man from Calais removed his shoes. Got to go now, but will check later.

Trike - I've looked in the Ives and Starkey biographies and the removing of shoes is not mentioned. However, Alison Weir, in her The Lady in the Tower: the Fall of Anne Boleyn, does say this: "She was neither aware of him taking it (the sword), nor of his approach, for he had removed his shoes and come up stealthily behind her."

The source (note 112 Chapter 13 For Now I Die) Weir gives for this is The Chronicle of Henry VIII, better known as The Spanish Chronicle. This is usually described as unreliable ("riddled with inaccuracies and written with a strong Imperial bias" - Borman).

It was definitely a clean, quick death, according to the various accounts we have: "He did his office very well, before you could say a Pasternoster," reported Sir John Spelman. It cost Henry £23 6s 8d.

Thanks Temp, I had thought the scene was a piece of dramatic licence, but it seems there may be a bit of truth in it.

Anne was certainly luckier with her executioner that some others. Margaret Pole needed 11 blows of the axe before dying.

Ah - over flowing mug of mirth today. Someone on BBC PoV  all excited says there will be a second in the series - and even a third!

So come on Manti get cracking...... I don't think that poster knew there would mean a nothing for Rylance. But wait,  how about a fake execution and Cromwell poppin' up again; eminence gris to the young boy king, supporter of Lady Jane to avoid Mary - nah dead end there again ....  but wait how about....

Oh gawd, extended series are such a nightmare.

Or they might become a soap. Ooops, stop there, woman: sudsie candle lit quicksand.