Does wolf hall get better?

[Cantonet]

I've just watched the first episode of the first series in preparation for the new series.
I feel like I'm watching a deeply repressive, utterly grim play. Is this series a slow burner? Or shall I give up watching now?

I think the idea is that we have to suck it up.
No wonder the Right are winning in the USA and Europe.

Jane Seymour did not have a black sister. There is absolutely no reason on earth why she would have. If it was a case of atavism it would have been documented as it would've have been jaw droppingly unusual - especially for nobility of the time. If two sisters were portrayed with different skin colours on Eastenders with not an ounce of explanation (not half sisters and known to be of white heritage), I'm sure people would be asking why.

What on earth does colour-blind casting have to do with the rise of the far right?

@IcedPurple no one is disputing that Tudor aristocrats were not Black. Some people are just pointing out that it’s a casting convention, not an attempt to rewrite history — as is often done in theatre. Phyllida Lloyd’s brilliant Donmar Julius Caesar didn’t ask us to think that Roman senators were all women, or an RSC production from maybe ten or fifteen years ago that Julius Caesar didn’t in fact rule an East African state.

Hamilton is probably the world’s most famous current musical, about the founding fathers of the US, told in rap/hiphop and with a non-white cast playing historically white peoole.

Phyllida Lloyd’s brilliant Donmar Julius Caesar didn’t ask us to think that Roman senators were all women, or an RSC production from maybe ten or fifteen years ago that Julius Caesar didn’t in fact rule an East African state.

So what is a production which prides itself on historical accuracy 'asking us to do' when they cast a black actress in the role of a white person who actually existed? They chose actors for all the other roles who were very believable as the characters they portrayed. So why not this one?

I can’t speak for the producers of Wolf Hall, but Peter Kosminsky has spoken about it in the media.

All I’m saying is that they’re not doing anything new in casting black actors as historically white figures. It’s over must be 25 years since David Oyelowo’s Henry VI for the RSC and nearly that since Adrian Lester’s Henry V for the NT.

You keep talking about the world of theatre, but it is a very different context.

Casting non-white actors as white historical characters is actually quite new in TV. Put it this way. How many black actors played white characters in the first 'Wolf Hall' a decade ago?

And you still haven't explained why the production's efforts to ensure historical accuracy were cast aside in this one case. Other than tokenism, that is.

I can’t speak for the producers of Wolf Hall, but Peter Kosminsky has spoken about it in the media.

This is what he said:

“Obviously we aren’t playing lookalikes in the series,” he said. “Damian Lewis is many things but he doesn’t particularly resemble Henry VIII and Jonathan Pryce doesn’t resemble Cardinal Wolsey. We cast the best actors we could to convey, in our opinion, the essence of the role.”

Colour blind casting is contributing to the rise of the right? So someone watching Wolf Hall will start supporting Reform because the actor playing Jane Seymour's sister is black?

I loved Wolf Hall, but I found the casting of non-white actors in these roles quite jarring in the context of the Tudor aristocracy (although I am generally aware and supportive of this casting convention). For me at least, it’s because I’m already having a hard time identifying who everyone is (based on my not-great knowledge of Tudor history) so I didn’t realise immediately that the person hitting on Crom was meant to be Elizabeth Seymour, the queen’s sister, because - well - how could she be? It was the same with Wolsey’s daughter - I was trying to work out whether her Indian appearance was telling me something about Wolsey’s past, or whether I was supposed to ignore it.

I know there was IRL a black trumpeter at the Tudor court and I saw him feature last night, which I am pleased about.

Why is theatre a different context?

And let me say again, I’m not the casting director or the producer of either series of Wolf Hall, so obviously I can’t speak for their decisions. I imagine you can find interviews online if you’re actually interested in their casting decisions.

I am simply someone who seems far less irritated by colour-blind/non-traditional casting than you are. And yes, that is probably because I go to the theatre a lot, particularly for Shakespeare, and routinely casting non-white actors as white historical figures has been completely normal for the best part of a quarter of a century.

I found Wolsey’s daughter not being white pretty distracting; kept thinking 'have I missed something we were told about him before?' Having said that, I suppose it's not impossible that he might have had a child with an Indian woman (is it? Is she documented/pictured in the historical record?). It's more jarring to me that Jane Seymour's sister is not white; surely there are portraits of and contemporaneous writings on her?

On the series itself, I've only watched the first two eps of The Mirror… so far but am loving it. I loved the first series too. I think you need to meet it at its own pace and get into the mood; it's not about big, massively dramatic, loud events, it's about quiet comments, sideways looks, a sudden change in atmosphere (like when Henry says, in a not particularly heated way, 'It's always you with the bad news, Thomas' – that was chilling.)

One thing I refute utterly is the suggestion that it looks 'cheap'

It is very unlikely Wolsey's mistress was from India - migration from India did not really start until the 1600s.

Yeah, I know, that’s why I found it unlikely. Maybe they hoped we’d just see her as generically ‘foreign’, or think she might be North African or something.

No, I just think that this (and Jane Seymor'ssister being black) as a purity test.

I rather enjoyed this (from Spiked)
The show’s makers have effectively used an artistic technique – colourblind casting – as a subtle provocation. This is not intended as propaganda to win over the masses to ‘wokery’. Rather, it is meant as in-crowd signalling. If you can watch Wolf Hall and pretend nothing has changed, you are one of the good folk.

Or if you watch Wolf Hall, notice they've changed their casting protocols since the first series ten years ago, and not view it as some kind of insurmountable problem or indication of the jiggery-pokery wokeness of late capitalism or something, you're just a person watching TV?

I'm probably quite far towards the 'woke' end of the spectrum (although I hate it as a word) but I do find the Indian daughter and black sister distracting in this context, because historically it just isn't accurate or convincing. The non-white people at the Privy Council table and in wider scenes – fine. But we'd know all about it already if Jane Seymour had had a sister with dark skin. And the Wolsey thing would work and actually be interesting if the actor playing his daughter were, say, of North African background; I'd imagine it would have been possible that he'd had a liaison with a woman from that part of the world.
It is a bit disingenuous to say one is/should just be 'a person watching TV'; there are different things on TV set in different times and contexts. Of course in a drama set now (in most places in the UK anyway) you'd expect to see people with a range of skin colours, and it wouldn't be an issue, because it reflects reality. But a TV drama about these specific people in this historical period – it's distracting and it doesn't enable you to suspend disbelief.

It is a bit disingenuous to say one is/should just be 'a person watching TV'

I'm not saying you should be anything. I'm saying that the non-trad casting of TMatL is not, as far as I'm concerned, a purity test that you only pass by being, or pretending to be, 'race-blind'. I certainly noticed. It just didn't particularly bother me. It wasn't any more bothersome for me as a viewer than what was (for me) the miscasting of the brilliant Mark Rylance as Cromwell, or all the endless shots of him doffing his hat and replacing it. Which I get is absolutely realistic, but which didn't, for me, make for good TV.

What I found distracting about the Dorothea scene was how box-fresh her habit looked, and why no one had been able to find a better part for Amanda Root than a single scene as the Abbess of the convent Dorothea is in.

I think finding an actor miscast for not being the right type, or objecting to decisions like the hat-doffing, is different in kind from being bothered by things that almost 100% didn't happen in history in a drama set in the past.

Totally agree. I fell asleep during the first episode. It felt like it had been made for high school children!
Henry hadn't appeared yet though. I can only imagine it gets more exciting with him in it.