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

yeah "poppy narrative drive"

there's a hypnotic/immersive quality to the rendering of Cromwell's consciousness that's amazingly handled. She's v good all-round – sense of detail, prose ear & structure, dialogue, thick/deep history, lotsa ideas etc – but that's next-level. Like i think this - "a uniform consistency of detail with rhythmical emphasis" - is true & was wearing on me 3/4 in but it's also what's so absorbing in big reading bursts. ok, yes, I'm saying it's krautrock.

idk she's probably been one of the best writers around for the past few years?

yeah, agree, definitely for England and double def for 'English writers of her generation'. Any reservations I have are from the 'this is great and worth thinking about and picking at' position.

but i don't know really it's not like i keep up with William Boyd

Haven't seen it but a couple of friends of mine who were discussing it last night were mildly outraged that one of the characters said something in Latin and then translated it.

... that's the sort of people I hang out with though.

there was also a subtitled bit of Latin, so it's willing to do the right thing.

I thought i heard them pronouncing Tyndale 'tine-dale' at More's house & was mildly outraged, but then it was def 'tindle' later on. I then thought More might be mispronouncing it deliberately, out of disrespect. But maybe I misheard.

in the book i always chortled when they're like "you can take the boy out of Putney..." in order to burnish Cromwell's hardman credentials

See also Squeeze's 'Up the Junction'

I never thought that it would happen
Me and a girl from Clapham

I bet even Overlord X's Rough In Hackney sounds a bit obsolescently joke these days.

Felt a little underwhelmed by the Fall of Wolsey Play

just watched ep 2. very enjoyable. 'fraid to say more says tinedale, and cromwell and more's wife both say tindle. disrespect only option, but a weird one.

i think whats bugging me about rylances cromwell is that he seems kind of...doddering? confused?

I thought he came a bit more alive in the scene where he was recounting his memories from italy; and have faith he'll come more into himself, and maybe his thug will surface, as the series progresses.

no I don't get doddering or confused. his delivery is fantastic. reminds me on Ian Bannen as Jim Prideaux in TTSS. steady. ep 2 marvellous.

That's is what I am hoping and thought there was some resounding hints of menace to come in his " no need to trouble god, i have it hand" line at the end.

so this aired on pbs last night? right? i missed it.

It's on pbs.org. When did Masterpiece Theater become just Masterpiece? I am old.

they folded mystery into it (as "masterpiece mystery" for a couple years) then dropped that too

I stopped paying attention because there was no buzz from the ILX UK contingent - did it get better, Britishes?

i liked it a lot

It's very good and honestly my biggest complaint is that it is too short

taping, will check it out and report back

i thought it was cracking.

loved every minute of it.

ah crap i meant to set my dvr
will remedy

At first I thought that Rylance was all wrong for the role, too understated, just not menacing enough, and then I kept watching and you realise that understatedness is what makes his Cromwell believable, in a show when virtually every other dude is growling threats through their teeth, he just does not let the mask slip at all.

that alone sounds v Cromwellian

I'm in

THought the tv series was very well done so want to read the books.
Hoping that both book and tv series will eventually take us up to Cromwell's demise. BUt I think that the background interview show said that Mantel now had other pressures than she did when she was writing the earlier volumes. I think it was also saying that the book had a lot more internal goings on with Cromwell showing what he was thinking etc which it wasn't very easy to show visually.

Yeah really want to read the book but I do have quite a long list of to reads so unless I suddenly turn up a charity shop find I'm unlikely to get to it for a while. & i would expect that charity shop finds are likely to be snapped up.

I did notice that Easons the Irish national chain newsagent was featuring both of the existing volumes on one of its main display tables at the moment. Not sure how long that will last with the tv series having ended about a month ago. But good to see something worthwhile getting featured. I think the other end of the same table had Kim Gordon's book in paperback and several of the current bestsellers in between.

The third in the trilogy will deal w/ Cromwell's demise.

Some of the other great casting was Clare Foy's Anne Boleyn and Bernard Hill who is a lot of fun as her ruthless sweary unc Norfolk, just wish they hadn't brought in one note Damian Lewis which almost could have wrecked this series for me. In the end I thought it was A+, probably re-watch it at some point.

I thought the series did get better as it went along; or maybe I just acclimatised to its (and specifically Rylance's) hushed, sombre energy. It's def worth sticking with, anyway. I found the final episode is particularly haunting.

matt dc otm. rylances performance is a real grower. the big issue i had is just that mantels books are such fantastic slow burns, both individually and across both, and its impossible to really let the plot work itself out in only six hour long episodes

found myself doing a mark rylance impression lately bc it's such an enjoyable way to speak

this ruled

I'm watching this now (it's streaming through the PBS channel on the Roku box if you have one of those) and I'm at the part where he loses his wife and daughters and it's absolutely gutting me.

That was sad in the book but holy cow. ;_;

Knowing what was about to happen, I nearly lost my shit at the little girl walking off with the candle and angel wings.

I knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

When the nursemaids were trying to wake up the girls, god.

I just bumped the ILB books of the 00s thread with the realisation that we somehow managed to poll 101 books without Wolf Hall even placing, and that was in a list containing the fucking God Delusion.

If we polled the whole thing again now WH would probably stand a pretty good chance of winning.

i was into the asynchronicity of the adap; when it started with wolsey's fall i thought the whole thing was gonna be fucked up

i really liked the way the episode handled the int'l political stuff (emperor charles, catherine, the pope etc), w just a little more direct exposition to make it stick. it's sort of hidden in plain sight in the book that cromwell, even more than henry!, can see the succession as an issue of national stability

also when mathieu amalric showed up as chapuys i was like yessss

oh i love him

i guess i'm still not entirely sold on rylance's supercool reading; i always heard the character as being cheerfully unflappable.

funny to dig around on the web/twitter for reactions to this and see comments from catholic conservatives that it's "propaganda". more's been dead nearly 500 years, let it go

lol

for catholics tho 500 years is like the 90's for us

for catholics tho 500 years is like the 90's for us

lol

I'm way into Rylance in this. He's cheerful in his own way. The look on his face after he meets with Henry the first time was perfect. So subtle but the Cromwellian version of jumping into the air, pumping his fist, and saying "YESSSSS."

Just one ep in the US so far, right?

yah

fellas you need to chill: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3027617/Americas-Catholic-bishops-attack-prejudice-laden-Wolf-Hall-BBC-drama-hits-screens.html

I think part of what got to me so hard about Liz and the daughters dying is how Mantel treats Cromwell's ongoing grief in the books. It's always there, quietly, relentlessly. He goes about his business, being 100% Cromwell, and then finds the wings and is hit with the loss all over again. Just knowing that their death is more than a sad scene, I think.

Also I'm a walking stereotype who since having a child cannot cope with seeing children die on TV or in movies.