Wolf Hall

Did anyone else think it was awful? love historical dramas so will stay with it in the hope we get more than stunted sentences & long woeful gazes into the mid distance

Re: Wolf Hall

Caught up with this on Iplayer this morning. It was very dark - apparently they tried to recreate authentic lighting effects - in fact sometimes you could not see the characters very clearly.

Having tried several times to read the two books on which this series is based, and failed because of Hilary Mantel's appalling approach to grammar, I was hoping that the visual version would be better. I was disappointed. It swung backwards and forwards in time far too much making the story disjointed and difficult to follow.

It was intriguing to see Thomas Cromwell as a family man though. Not a side of him that is usually portrayed.

Much as I love Tudor history I am not sure I will be watching further episodes.

Re: Wolf Hall

Didn't these books receive high acclaim? With bad grammar? Good grief.

Re: Wolf Hall

Not a fan of Hilary Mantel so gave it a miss...
Glad you enjoyed it though Jodie

Re: Wolf Hall

Yeh it wasn't so much the lighting , was expecting that, it was the dialogue - sort of stunted, the characters seemed trapped by the dialologue too, Henry & Anne looked like they were really trying but they were stuck with the same half-sentences /abrupt pauses as Cromwell was .. at first I thought that was supposed to be his character, but everyone else was the same! I got Wolf Hall as an audio book & I thought it awful, dark & miserable. Couldn't stick with it. I have a theory Hilary Mantel is a depressive (she's had a rough life healthwise) & it comes out in her writing.

Re: Wolf Hall

Yes - I believe the first one won the Booker prize. Not sure about the second one.

HM has a very strange writing style i.e., she does not always put dialogue in speech commas - but does sometimes. Which I find inconsistent and confusing. Also she has a habit of referring to just 'he' or 'she' when there are four or five people involved so you are not certain to whom she is referring, and then does the complete opposite by using 'He, Cromwell ...' or 'He, Wolsey ...' etc.,

Then she has multiple people speaking in the same paragraph, with and without quotes, so you totally lose the context and have to keep rereading sections.

Very odd.

Re: Wolf Hall

LOL more like irritated & annoyed, been looking forward to that for days, stuck indoors with a fever,sore throat , virus thing. And it had so much hype! all those luvvies wetting their designer underpants! I hoped for better :b

Re: Wolf Hall

Recorded this last night.Will watch it at some point(?)

Re: Wolf Hall

Glad I gave it a miss then. Not a fan of period dramas (with the exception of The Paradise - the store alternative to Mr Selfridge).

Re: Wolf Hall

I loved 'The Paradise' hope it comes back for another round. I even loved The Tudors, even if it was slightly daft at times, but it was really colourful, had clout & made you want to look up the characters & the actual stories behind them. Plus there was some real eye candy in those tights & funky riding boots lol