itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

that Beyond Belief convo was good, thx for that!

The Schama 'History of Britain' series comes with the usual Schama caveats but the Reformation episode is good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074l1q

Diarmid MacCulloch's BBC series on the history of Christianity was good. The Reformation episode is here:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x76hxnf

enjoying the In Our Time convos

i always am amused by how he doesn’t let guests waffle on when they clearly want to and then they try to poke in w extra waffling & he cuts them off or talks over them (feel sorry for them sometimes lol)

y'know i have a ton of Melvyn Bragg grudges but In Our Time is usually pretty great

the podcast is nice because you get that extra 5 minutes at the end where the producer asks if anyone wants any tea and the guests get to circle back to their foreshortened waffleage

that diarmid macculloch series is really good, it's true Chinaski!

that sounds like the sweet antithesis of when i have to watch camera people wank on about hiding up a tree at the end of modern nature docs

have i done Bragg = Ken Barlow yet on ilx

anyways Ken Barlow is a satirical portrait of Melvyn, for better and worse

i subscribed to In Our Time a few years back, but deleted it & this is a solid reminder to get back in

also i enjoy the occasional background cough on mic, or best is the ~audible sigh~ from a guest waiting to speak

those studios have "cough buttons" on the table in front of the guests, who can push them whenever they need to cut their mic if their feel a cough coming on, but not everyone remembers to do it. academics often aren't the nimblest broadcasters

and yeah even if they do use the button, it is picked up in the background - just not as loud

i find it enjoyable

to bring it back to Wolf Hall

i know this may sound a little naive & perhaps even daft but it had never occurred to me until reading these books that common folk hadn’t had access to the scriptures to read for themselves until Luther & all these reformists & be-heathening happened.

*also ironic that I didn’t know any of the protestant reformation history since i grew up Church Of England lol. all i ever knew was “Henry wanted to divorce his wife so he made a church” (which is also true)

anyway

My dad was a Lutheran though he never went to church, and my mom was a Catholic who dragged me and my brother through the whole thing (first communion, confirmation, serving as altar boys, etc.). One day I asked Dad what the difference between Catholic church and Lutheran church was and he told me that in Lutheran church the Lord's Prayer went like this... blah blah blah... and there were only about two words difference between them. I did not exactly have a big breakthrough based on this new information.

my mother in law was Catholic & we used to go to church together at Christmas
i remember she was surprised that I knew the words to mass etc lol

also my first trip to the US i stayed with a devout Roman Catholic family, and i told mum on the phone “there’s crosses everywhere & they have a bottle of holy water in the house!” and she said “don’t tell them you’re Church Of England or they’ll burn you alive”

is there any word on the mirror and the light tv series eta? will it be this xmas?

wait so did they already do Bring Up The Bodies and I missed it?

the series "wolf hall" covers the first two books.

apparently s3 was in preproduction in 2022 but i haven’t seen any updates lately

s2 sorry

theyre reshooting the ending after the first one screened badly with the focus group

tc goes to space

in the last page of Mirror he kind of does!

the audiobook read by Ben Miles is great. i've never been one for those but I gave it a shot and now I think I'm spoiled on any other, it's a tremendous performance.

this past week i read “Memoirs Of My Former Self” - the posthumous collection of Mantel’s essays, reviews & lectures
Really great collection, lots of variety in her essays (she even reviewed movies back in the late 80’s!)

there’s a really beautiful essay from 2007 she wrote about visiting Rafe Sadler’s house in Hampstead, and how she wasn’t overcome by any feelings one way or another until she saw the handmade Tudor bricks in the cellar, one with the outline of blade of grass caught in it, and another with a dog’s pawprint, and she was suddenly reduced to tears by the shock of the past. <3

Thanks for tip; bought immediately. :)

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/oct/25/wolf-hall-the-mirror-and-the-light-bbc

Can't wait for this. A bit of digging on Google suggests it'll be out by Xmas. Feeling joy already imagining sitting down to this on a cold winter's night.

finally! yes what a treat

already sad thinking about it tho

this guy has a good face

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/64eea1d5bf086dca50f77340afd8f8cd9deb020b/95_945_5982_3590/master/5982.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

Pondering a re-read for this.

he looks so dignified in wolf hall but less so in the current london juno and the paycock adaptation which i prob skeeted about. there's a touch of day-lewis about him where i'm a bit amused by his acting sometimes, but not in this.

it's gonna be so good, i really hope they don't release it until 20 december or something, i want to watch this over xmas ideally.

https://www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/imgs/shows/juno-and-the-paycock/hero/juno-and-the-paycock-with-cast-small.jpg

x-post i've never read the books, i prob should.

Didn’t the first series go out after Christmas and the over next year originally?

Jfc lg you have to read the books!

I only watched the first series like a year ago also. No idea what I was doing when it came out, prob just not paying attention. So by that token I should get around to the books now for sure.

Wish they made more shit like this, it proves they can make unamericanised TV if the source material is there.

Oh god yes, you must read them! What a monstrous achievement.

I read that Mantel's first thought for the book was Cromwell saying 'now get up' and that everything built to that moment. For all Rylance can be a ham, he carries his end in every frame, somehow.

shamefacedly admitting they're on my "to read but not yet read" pile too

I once co-worked on making the set for a production of Juno Paycock at Bradford Playhouse.. twas the height of my theatrical career darlings!

so up for this.

omg omg so excited
clearly a sign that i must reread :D

Yozza (RIP) was a fantastic Norfolk, but I guess Spall has the acting chops to fill his boots

yeah i he’ll be good

fwiw, the audiobooks are very very good

Juno was on the Irish Leaving Cert, it's a brilliant play imo. Not sure about this London version and also tickets are hundred quid or more.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GawZcwdWgAANWAn?format=jpg&name=900x900

tickets were £3.50 on the BPH production of it that I worked on, but tbf this was 1991

That was before the whole world was in a terrible state of chassis

There's a Hitchcock version of Juno, silent I think?

Yep, saw that at the BFI about a decade ago. Very weird, it's one of his first films I think. Also has one absolutely glaring bit of anti-semitism which is not in any way based on anything in the play.

This is on iPlayer on Sunday 10 November!

New episodes will be released weekly, rather than as a box set.

urge to kill... rising.

oh ffs. if i wait until they're all on iPlayer are the first eps gonna drop off?

i'd imagine not. i am kinda tempted to wait until dec 22nd or whatever and binge it all now. tho i'll be in dublin then so i'd have to wait until returning to london on 30th and a week off. which would be amazing, but requires a lot of will power.

binge it all then*