Damian Lewis fans line up for Wolf Hall tonight

[Travelledtheworld]

Wednesday 21st January BBC2 Channel 4

lush costumes.

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/11358197/Damian-Lewiss-inspiration-for-Wolf-Halls-Henry-VIII-Wills-and-Harry.html

you could parody this quite effectively and cheaply by showing an entirely black screen with a voiceover

God it was good. Call-Me-Risley. Kittens. A white rabbit. Bloody hell why can't all telly be this good? Broadchurch I'm looking at you

Just - I'll be rewatching tonight's episode, too. I was so engrossed the final credits took me by surprise.

Wow. Revelatory. Loved it, going to get better every week it appears.

Loved it!

Had to resort to IMDB at one point to remind myself where I'd seen "Mary Boleyn" before - she was Marianne Dashwood in the Sense & Sensibility remake a few years ago

Top notch stuff. Loved the bit at the end with the masque..more foreshadowing with TC silently watching, waiting and plotting his next move.

Also liked the way they made Call-Me-Risley look slightly spivvy, with his leopard skin get up. That's just how I imagined him from the books.

A very compliant rabbit. We had a rabbit once, if you picked it up it inflicted vicious injuries with its back legs.

It's so good. I watched last week's 4 times on iplayer and I sense I'll be doing the same with this week's.

If anyone else finds that a soothing intellectual podcast gets them off to sleep very nicely, I've just found this biography of Thomas Cromwell from the historian Tracy Borman on the national archives website.

It's brilliant. You can just immerse yourself and let the story tell itself to you. The acting is superb and I'm getting the hots for TC.

merlincat

Am I the only person who is not 100% loving it?
Mark Rylance is a great actor and very pretty but I can't buy him in the least as the historical Thomas Cromwell. In the books Mantel achieved the thing of making him complete different from the Cromwell we thought we knew and yet still plausible as the historical figure, but on screen it's just not working for me.

I am loving the lighting though! And the set design.

If anyone wants to get really riled, read the Guardian's catch up blog this morning - so many mistakes, and bizarrely all related to pets. The writer says the kittens 'spawned' under Cromwell's bed - no, it was Wolsey's, then he says the White rabbit belonged to Wolsey, no it was More's. And then he adds 'historically, More was known to have a pet monkey' - yes, the monkey was in the episode, at the dinner table! Was it too dark for him to notice it?

They hadn't opened the comments on the article when I left the house this morning so having to come & vent here instead! Maybe they are making some corrections to it first...

Either way, it was very odd how many animals featured in the episode, what with Gregory's greyhounds as well. The white rabbit scene was truly odd.

Countess- try that podcast, it does reconcile it all quite well.

I loved More's wife glugging down the wine and asking Cromwell if everything in the pants department was in working order. I expected Sir Thomas More to have a saintly wife whose mind was always on spiritual matters.

squoosh me too

I know little about Cromwell and haven't read HM, am enjoying this immensely.

Anton Lesser is excellent, as always.

I think we often presume that we (modern-day people) are far more open about sexual matters and oh-so liberated, but we've probably got nothing on Tudor-era folk! The stories of people hanging around outside bedrooms on wedding nights to listen out for confirmation the marriage has been consumated; the inspections of bedsheets for signs of semen or periods; and the fact that so many men had mistresses. Being the King's mistress was to be aspired to, much like a modern day wannabe-WAG!

Thanks BOF, I will.
I've heard good things about the Borman book.

That's true. Not Tudor era but there's a description of a wedding night in Rose Tremain's Restoration that would shock our innocent modern selves. People in the room to make sure the couple were getting naked and getting down to business.

Wasn't it the Victorian era that turned us into prudes?

The prudery gets going in the early 19th century, just before Victoria comes to the throne. So it's not her fault IYSWIM.

I always think it's interesting that young people of that era will have had grannies who drank and swore, that they'd have been all disapproving of, whereas with us it's more likely to be the other way round!

Exactly what I was about to say Exit, I suspect all pre-Victorian era folk were pretty liberal sex-wise. It was a fact of life, like death and disease.

Obviously I'd exclude the Puritans from that statement.

There are different aspects of what we'd call being liberal, aren't there? The Tudors might have talked about it more but they still thought lots of non-missionary position things were sinful.

The medieval sex flowchart might take it a bit literally but it's still quite interesting: Can I have sex?