Hacker Cinema
Wolf Hall
2015 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Peter Straughan, Peter Kosminsky, Hilary Mantel
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the King dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope and most of Europe oppose him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer, and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
4 positive2 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
>Wolf Hall ...
you're nitpicking. it's a high class, well-produced, well-acted, British-made TV show, by the BBC, of a very high quality that would be well-regarded in any era (if you ignore the weird racial thing they did in S2)
>Line of Duty
your opinion is absolutely in the minority, which isn't to say it's wrong, but it's a very well regarded, high class show that's widely seen as well above "decent procedural"
>Adolescence
whether it's liberal or paid for by Netflix is irrelevant to whether it's a high quality British-made tv show
>you haven't watched the others
then you're going to struggle to give a useful opinion on this matter, aren't you?
>Hardly in the class of historical Beeb
every historical BBC show you can name will have myriad minor subjective criticisms of the like you've just produced
>let alone contemporary US brilliance.
if you think US TV is even remotely comparable with UK TV, you're not paying attention. the US is long since out of its golden era, which pretty much died with Game of Thrones. US media has an order of magnitude more financial means than that of the UK, and yet what have they created of any real quality in the last few years besides White Lotus? they repeatedly fail to even remotely approach the class and quality of our TV. on the rare occasions they do get close, it's on the back of British actors or British production
this kind of take is usually the preserve of nostalgic old men who've just discovered YouTube comments, so I'm surprised to see it rephrased so many times here. if you aren't finding high quality modern British-made TV shows it's because you're not looking or you're unwilling to try new things. Wolf Hall, Line of Duty, Slow Horses, Rivals, Fleabag, Adolescence, Inside no 9, Veep, etc etc etc etc. I could name 10 more. TV is more stratified and yes there are a lot of worthless filler game shows and talk shows, but just as it was in the 70s and 80s, there are plenty of stand-out shows that will last the test of time
It might be a moot point anyway. If we can consider Disney a bellwether¹, expect more content producers to step back on the diversity front.
Personally I think it completely depends on the story and artistic direction. Wolf Hall (casting mostly reflects historical appearances of characters portrayed) can exist next to Bridgerton (explicitly colour-blind casting). Both have their merits.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/18/chanel-stewart-trans-actor-win-or-lose-disney-pixar-changes-character-cisgender
There's also Season 2 of Wolf Hall itself, filming sometime soon. Maybe they'll get the codpieces right this time, but it will be an awesome series regardless.
Interesting titbit in the last paragraph: apparently in the Wolf Hall series based on Hillary Mantel's trilogy, the codpieces in the show weren't as big as they ought to have been given historical evidence.
That, at least, Blackadder got right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5A55eWbiBI
Maybe a tad more modest (season 2 might have gotten it exactly right, although the codpiece seems to have been getting less popular by then during the reign of Elizabeth I).
Wolf Hall, the TV series, is a masterpiece. Supposedly a second series was ordered and I can't wait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(TV_series)
Mark Rylance is excellent in the slow-moving Wolf Hall, about a no-name Thomas Cromwell's rise to influence in Henry VIII's court. I hope they go through with season 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(TV_series)
The film's OK. The books are up there with Mantel's Wolf Hall series or Renault's Alexander novels. Well worth a read.
For a great BBC mini-series based on Cromwell's story watch Wolf Hall ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(miniseries)
If you're interested in more examples of worldly clergymen check out Thomas Wolsey in the novel "Wolf Hall", Thomas a Becket in the movie "Becket" (1964), and of course Cardinal Richelieu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu