The superlatives came thick and fast even before broadcast. Is this the most eagerly anticipated BBC drama in years? All the augurs were good: two Booker-winning novels, a long hit run of a two-night play at the Globe and in the West End, and not forgetting much-loved predecessors covering similar territory ('The Six Wives of Henry VIII' etc.). Hype, however, is a double-edged sword, and the transformation of over a thousand pages of close, nuanced text into a compelling televisual feast was always going to be a challenge.
On the evidence of the first episode, fans of 'The Tudors' will be sorely disappointed. Other than the necessary bursts of tedious exposition ("The Emperor's men have taken the Pope! That's Queen Katherine's nephew and he'll never let the Pope grant a divorce!") this panders hardly at all to an audience in search of Henry-lite storytelling. The costumes do not flatter, the dialogue retains the sour wit of the original prose and Cromwell himself, though reconfigured from villainy, is too elusive to be a hero.
Broadly speaking, this follows the chronology of the novels, a teasing, pleasing structure that takes small hops forward and back like a courtly dance. We accompany Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), son of a blacksmith, with a murky, violent past on his journey through the often sad, always brutal rise and fall of Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy). Rylance, for anyone who has yet to be convinced, is wonderful, his expression and demeanour conveying in stillness or mobility the man Cromwell, aware he is engaged in dangerous manoeuverings and beset by men who kill easily, take confession and eat with a hearty appetite afterwards.
It is, to be slightly pedantic, a bit clean. Floors are swept, draperies untouched by dust or grease, even in Cromwell's middling home. It's forgiveable though, when the sound is audible, the music unobtrusive and the filming in appropriate light such as fire and candlelight gives beautiful shade and depth to the scenes. This isn't history, it is Mantel's re-imagination of a man's life in Tudor England. We know relatively little about the figure with the steely gaze in Holbein's portrait, but this telling surely does him proud.
I could not put the book down.I read it so fast I had to go at it for a second time.Excellent research,very good writing.More fascinating because it gives the idea that it was not written for Hollywood.
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