Well, like no doubt millions of people I tuned in last night for the first episode of the long awaited BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell Trilogy Book 2). As you might imagine, as a HUGE fan of the books and the RSC play, I was pretty much pre-disposed to absolutely love the television series too but there was still a tiny little sneaking worry there too. I mean, what if I HATED it? What then?
However, I’m pleased (and very relieved!) to report that I really loved it and can’t wait for the rest of the series to unfold. Unfold certainly seems like the right word here – like the books, it’s a slow mover but at the same time it rewards patience as the viewer penetrates further and further into the maze of Thomas Cromwell’s complex mind and his even more complicated wheelings and dealings at the court of Henry VIII. As I know the history inside out, I really loved the way Mantel set up the fall of Anne Boleyn in Bring up the Bodies with a few beautifully subtle hints back at the start of Wolf Hall and was pretty much punching the air when machinations that were gently put into process over six years beforehand finally came to glorious and bloody fruition, proving that revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. Yup, Mark Smeaton, when Cromwell says that he’s thinking about you, I’d be REALLY worried not just smirk in that annoyingly superior way.
Just as the books beautifully evoke a real sense of Tudor England, from the splendours of the court to the bustle of Cromwell’s own City milieu at Austin Friars, the television series manages to accomplish the same feat, creating a glorious flickering candle lit, chiaroscuro world of light and shade as Cromwell passes from smoke stained house to candlelit mansion to sunlit knot garden to the opulent residence of the King’s lady love. In the books, Cromwell does a lot of walking around – which displays both his seemingly endless energy but also means that we, the reader get to see London through his observant and wryly humorous eyes as he goes about his business in the City and court, bumping into associates for brief but loaded chats about current affairs and sticking his fingers into many different pies. I loved that the television series remained true to this.
I wasn’t sure about the casting of Mark Rylance but I think I get it now. He lacks menace but vividly captures Cromwell’s complex personality – a mixture of sharply keen intelligence, affability and melancholy. In the first episode, he spends a lot of time observing the other characters from the shadows and enduring their insults with quiet good humour, even if he’s clearly keeping a tally in his head of who smiled at him and who called him ‘Butcher’s Dog’. His loyalty and affection is what shines through though and is what, I think, made Mantel’s interpretation so unexpectedly delightful – he clearly regards Wolsey as the father he never had and works ceaselessly to restore him in the King’s mercurial favour and his obvious heartbroken distress at the deaths of his much loved family is genuinely distressing to behold. I suspect that as the series progresses, we will all slip even further under Cromwell’s spell and rightly so.
There were a lot of complaints on Twitter last night about the ‘slowness’ of the first episode, which is fair if you’re used to the somewhat frenzied pacing of shows like The Tudors as Wolf Hall definitely had a more leisured and sombre pace. The first episode was really a scene setter, designed to introduce the viewer to Cromwell and his world. He’s a City man though so this world, then as now, is one populated by sombre dark suits, hushed (and hissed) conversations in corners, sly backstabbing and networking. I thought it was telling that Twitter seemed to come to relieved life more when Henry VIII (played with a perfect mixture of menace and boyishness by Damien Lewis) first swaggered on screen towards the end of the episode as here was, to most not entirely au fait with the history modern viewers, a recognisable figure and one, then as now, who very definitely brought the party with him with his crimson and gold. Perhaps it might have been better to have a few more scenes of court life as that’s where the energy and glitz and really dangerous drama was going on, but I liked the gentle pace of the first episode with its glimpses into Cromwell’s own world of serious business and sombre faced men before he gets drawn more into Henry’s vibrant and magnificent court.
Overall, I was really impressed by the first episode of Wolf Hall – as a fan of the books, it really felt like their essence of grim menace, dark humor and occasional flashes of glorious illumination had been properly captured. Stand out moments for me were those beautiful interior shots of Wolsey’s richly decorated palace, flirtatious Mary Boleyn’s careless bitching about her sister, Jane Seymour’s backward look at Cromwell (the interaction between Seymour and Cromwell was, for me, one of the high points of the books), Cromwell’s tense meeting with his father, Smeaton totally not getting that he’s a dead man walking now, Cromwell’s amazing side eye when his reformer chums talk about going to see the Pope, Grace Seymour with her peacock feather angel’s wings (sob), the highly strung and ambitious Anne Boleyn’s pretentious French accented mangling of Cromwell’s name (they did this in the RSC play too) while obviously not realising that Cromwell, who likes to keep his talents under his hat, is a far superior linguist, the tender care with which Cromwell tucked Wolsey into bed then knelt for his blessing and, finally, Cromwell giving well deserved smack downs to Thomas More and Gardiner (played with wonderful snottiness by Mark Gatiss). Glorious.
Pity my poor husband though, who really isn’t a history buff (he kept complaining about me telling him ‘spoilers’ when we watched The Tudors together – it’s THAT bad, seriously) and saw Wolf Hall as an endless brown and gray parade of a book he didn’t want to read and shabby old stately homes he didn’t want to visit. I’ve dragged him to most of the places used as filming locations (it was mostly filmed near here and in fact they used Bristol cathedral for Anne Boleyn’s coronation scenes so I’ll be coming back with some nice pictures of that and some other locations at some point) and kept pointing them out to him while he made traumatised noises. Bless. However, with that in mind, I can totally see why people who didn’t enjoy the books or don’t know the history might not enjoy the serialisation of Wolf Hall. However, for those who did love the books and aren’t perturbed by the jumping forward and back in time then you are in for a real treat.
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