Season 45 - Wolf Hall (2014)
Wolf Hall is an intriguing look at the life of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII wherein it tells the story by telling the stories around the story. We don't see the big expected moments, we see the quiet contemplative moments where time stops and takes a beat before resuming. Mark Rylance is able to portray all that is going through Thomas Cromwell's mind with just a look, a simple sigh, a readjustment of his robes before entering a room. This is a masterclass in acting while at the same time you don't think of him as an actor in a role, he becomes Thomas Cromwell. Just as Damian Lewis becomes, in my mind, the definitive Henry VIII. There's humor, there's pathos, there's regret, and there's menace. All that is needed for a king because they can turn on a dime. One minute you're in favor, the next, because you couldn't do the impossible, you're dying in a cold room alone crying out for your loved ones. The first season covered the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn culminating in her death while the second season, arriving a decade later, charts Thomas Cromwell's life mirroring Anne's all the way to the gallows. They both went above their station and displeased the king and their downfall was inevitable. Because to gain power you gain enemies and if those enemies, even for a second, gain the ear of the king, well, you're in trouble. And the second season covering the final book in Hilary Mantel's trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is Cromwell realizing that to get where he is in life he has done some pretty despicable deeds for the greater good of the kingdom. I mean, I could have told him that right away, no one involved with the monarchy in any way has a clear conscious. Yet I think he really thought he was the good guy, he thought that what he did was right and it's only when the daughter of his mentor spurns him and calls him out does he start to question his life. For someone who was so good at his job to lack such self-awareness is kind of an interesting sight to behold and Mark Rylance is able to give it the right gravitas. But my problem with this series is that the first season was sheer perfection. There was not a wrong note. In only six episodes it showed how this man moved through the world and was shaping history by taking care of the little details. Then a decade passes and they decide to finally adapt the final volume and things have changed over time. And instead of striving to maintain faith with the first season they decided to shake things up. There's still basically the same fantastic leads, the same sumptuous costumes, the same music keeping pace with time advancing forward, but there are serious missteps. My main quibble was with the recasting, some of it blatant stunt casting. Obviously some actors had to be recast because they had died. That is the only legitimate excuse for recasting. They should have dragged Tom Holland back to set and demanded he play Cromwell's son. Spiderman can wait! There were just so many cast replacements that I was baffled. And none of them for the better. They didn't even have the same vibe. I mean, what the hell is going on with Chapuys!?! The two different actors don't even have a nominal similarity. And don't get me started on the lack of Jessica Raine! And yet, the way this was filmed they act like we should somehow be able to intuit without being told that these are the same characters. I fear that is not the case. You can tell a story by telling around it, you can't tell a story if you don't tell us who the people are. I recently read a review of the first two books and the reviewer was outraged that they had tried to adapt such stunning works for the small screen saying it would take away the magic. I say, they did have the magic. They just lost it after a decade.
Wolf Hall is an intriguing look at the life of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII wherein it tells the story by telling the stories around the story. We don't see the big expected moments, we see the quiet contemplative moments where time stops and takes a beat before resuming. Mark Rylance is able to portray all that is going through Thomas Cromwell's mind with just a look, a simple sigh, a readjustment of his robes before entering a room. This is a masterclass in acting while at the same time you don't think of him as an actor in a role, he becomes Thomas Cromwell. Just as Damian Lewis becomes, in my mind, the definitive Henry VIII. There's humor, there's pathos, there's regret, and there's menace. All that is needed for a king because they can turn on a dime. One minute you're in favor, the next, because you couldn't do the impossible, you're dying in a cold room alone crying out for your loved ones. The first season covered the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn culminating in her death while the second season, arriving a decade later, charts Thomas Cromwell's life mirroring Anne's all the way to the gallows. They both went above their station and displeased the king and their downfall was inevitable. Because to gain power you gain enemies and if those enemies, even for a second, gain the ear of the king, well, you're in trouble. And the second season covering the final book in Hilary Mantel's trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is Cromwell realizing that to get where he is in life he has done some pretty despicable deeds for the greater good of the kingdom. I mean, I could have told him that right away, no one involved with the monarchy in any way has a clear conscious. Yet I think he really thought he was the good guy, he thought that what he did was right and it's only when the daughter of his mentor spurns him and calls him out does he start to question his life. For someone who was so good at his job to lack such self-awareness is kind of an interesting sight to behold and Mark Rylance is able to give it the right gravitas. But my problem with this series is that the first season was sheer perfection. There was not a wrong note. In only six episodes it showed how this man moved through the world and was shaping history by taking care of the little details. Then a decade passes and they decide to finally adapt the final volume and things have changed over time. And instead of striving to maintain faith with the first season they decided to shake things up. There's still basically the same fantastic leads, the same sumptuous costumes, the same music keeping pace with time advancing forward, but there are serious missteps. My main quibble was with the recasting, some of it blatant stunt casting. Obviously some actors had to be recast because they had died. That is the only legitimate excuse for recasting. They should have dragged Tom Holland back to set and demanded he play Cromwell's son. Spiderman can wait! There were just so many cast replacements that I was baffled. And none of them for the better. They didn't even have the same vibe. I mean, what the hell is going on with Chapuys!?! The two different actors don't even have a nominal similarity. And don't get me started on the lack of Jessica Raine! And yet, the way this was filmed they act like we should somehow be able to intuit without being told that these are the same characters. I fear that is not the case. You can tell a story by telling around it, you can't tell a story if you don't tell us who the people are. I recently read a review of the first two books and the reviewer was outraged that they had tried to adapt such stunning works for the small screen saying it would take away the magic. I say, they did have the magic. They just lost it after a decade.
You might be asking yourself what fool would watch House of the Dragon given the way that Game of Thrones ended. Well I am that fool! Say it in your best Raul Julia Gomez Addams voice if you please. The reason I will keep going back to the Game of Thrones universe is that I remember the magic of reading the first three books in the summer of 2002. My friend Jess introduced me to the books. We had just been to see Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man and we went out to eat and hung out at Barnes and Noble after. We were both picking up books and asking each other if we'd read it. I foisted Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials on her and she foisted I Am Legend and A Game of Thrones on me. We left the store poor in money but richer in stories. And I soon wanted a direwolf. Even sooner I went back to Barnes and Noble and picked up A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords and then started playing the real game you play if you're a fan of George R.R. Martin, the waiting game. Yep. I'm somehow still playing it. And there was a part of me that was like, do I want to watch House of the Dragon? Not only could it let me down again in epic fashion, but it's a prequel, with prequels you know where they're going. And then the cast was announced. I really had no choice after that point. Even if Matt Smith wasn't in it there's Paddy Considine,
Rhys Ifans, and Olivia Cooke. These are some actors I truly love and every day it seemed like more were joining, in fact I was so unable to keep up with the announcements I didn't even know that Nicholas Jones was in it until he showed up on Dragonstone in the last episode. And if you don't know who Nicholas Jones is, do yourself a favor and watch some seventies and eighties British miniseries, Anna Karenina, Lillie, and The Flame Trees of Thika are a good start. But with all these great casting announcements a problem was revealed, a problem that the show has been rightly criticized for, the pacing. They were recasting characters with new actors every other episode because of the whooshing sound time was making as episodes jumped decades from one week to the next. This led to great confusion, and also great apathy. While I was looking forward to Olivia Cooke I had no idea how invested I'd get in Alicent being played by Emily Carey. Likewise with Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra. They became the characters to me and when they foisted the change in actors I felt no connection to them. It wasn't even until the last two episode that I felt that Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy actually connected to their characters. But thankfully during this turmoil the show was carried by Paddy Considine as Viserys. He brought such pathos, such vulnerability to a king that you couldn't help but feel for him. So while the showrunners are claiming that next season will fix the pacing problem, and hopefully they'll remember to never do day for night again, the question remains, can the show succeed without Viserys carrying it on his frail shoulders? Perhaps if they better used Matt Smith they could solve their problem.
