Wolf Hall

[DarkDarkNight]

Just to let people know that Wolf Hall is back on iPlayer.

Thought I’d mention it as I’ve been looking for a way to watch it without having to subscribe to anything else.

@Peapod29

He was menacing alright. A bruiser, mercenary, ready with his fists or any weapon at hand really. Later in life he developed his calculating persona but still never lost his intimidating air

@Peapod29, Mantel’s Cromwell is very much the Cromwell of Holbein’s portrait — short, heavy-set, small-eyed, dark, belligerent-looking. A bruiser. Remember the way Wolsey affectionately describes him as being like the kind of low fighting dog a thug would own? And when he first sees Holbein’s portrait, he says It look like a murderer!’ And his son Gregory says ‘Didn’t you know?’

I love Mark Rylance, but it didn’t work as casting for me — he simply didn’t look like a plausible blacksmith’s son, or physically threatening at all, and it’s key to TC’s character that he looks like a guy who’d start a dirty fight and win it. Mark Rylance did his best to exude psychological menace, but you needed someone bulkier.

Mark Gatiss and Claire Foy were brilliantly cast, I thought.

He says ‘I look like a murderer’, sorry.

I always read it as Wolsey making a friendly ‘dig’ at his lowly upbringing. He must have won over with his intellect, considering he managed to persuade many ‘higher born’ people to bend to his (Henry’s) will, including the princess Mary (im talking only about Mantels character of course). I will carry on with the mirror and the light with a more open minded his thuggish side though!

Mantel’s Cromwell is very much the Cromwell of Holbein’s portrait — short, heavy-set, small-eyed, dark, belligerent-looking. A bruiser. Remember the way Wolsey affectionately describes him as being like the kind of low fighting dog a thug would own? And when he first sees Holbein’s portrait, he says It look like a murderer!’ And his son Gregory says ‘Didn’t you know?’

Absolutely!

I envisaged him as a sort of "Tony Soprano" character - very strong on family, but stop at nothing to get his own way.

He was actually a great reformer - not just regarding religion - and did his best to to a lot of good for the common man - partly, I think, because he knew what it was like to go to bed hungry (or not have a bed to go to, and have to sleep in the street) and partly because he was very aware that if England needed to get an army together, a ragtag of half-starved, pox-ridden peasants would be less effective than well(ish)-fed and healthy battalions.

Dairmid Macculloch's "Thomas Cromwell: A Life" paints a sympathetic picture of him, and more accurate than Mantell's, which is superb, but as it is novelised contains some artistic license.