Wolf Hall

I'm not sure how I managed to let this amazing TV series pass me by when it was first on the BBC back in 2015 - at least with most series I look at on this blog I have the excuse that they were made a long time before I was. I suppose I must have been occupied with other important cat business, such as rewatching Blakes 7 or having sleeps?

Wolf Hall is yet another historical drama set at the time of king Henry viii, of which there have been so many that a cat could easily write an article entitled 'The Six Historical Dramas of Henry viii' if one were so inclined. What sets this one apart from the others is that it takes as its Point-of-View character not the king, which is more usual, nor even any of his wives, but rather Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, is very much the protagonist, and as such is present in virtually every scene. His main antagonist is Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy), who he spends most of the series seeking revenge against for her causing the political downfall of his father-figure Cardinal Wolsey (Johnny P) in episode one.

This is a total reversal of how Boleyn and Cromwell are normally positioned in historical dramas, such as in 1970s The Six Wives of Henry viii, the second episode of which covers a lot of the same historical ground as Wolf Hall. There Anne Boleyn is the focus (as the series name suggests) and Thomas Cromwell is played by Wolfe "Padmasambhava" Morris as the antagonist.

With so many prior Henry viii-era dramas to compare Wolf Hall to, 'Six Wives' stands out because of Keith Michell's arguably definitive version of the tyrant-king, against which subsequent portrayals are measured in the way Sherlock Holmes are compared to Basil Rathbone's. A typical example of such might be Ray Winstone's Henry viii in a 2003 ITV series, although probably the most extreme reaction against Michell was Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors (2007-2010). Wolf Hall's Henry (Damian "Jeffrey Archer" Lewis) is unlike all these earlier versions in that, while the king casts a long shadow over the plot, he is never allowed to overshadow Rylance's Cromwell at its centre.

What we get from Lewis when he is on screen is a sense of the king being somewhat detached from the struggles and squabbles of his subjects - perhaps because as king he is on another level above them, or perhaps because he has mannys like Cromwell to get their paws dirty on his behalf. We see this most clearly when, just after Anne has been beheaded (spoilers! of an event from 1536!) in a scene that carries on long enough to make everyone watching uncomfortable, Henry is the only one still laughing and smiling. Common to both Michell and Lewis's characterisations is the unavoidable historical fact that this was someone happy to have innocent mannys convicted on trumped up charges and sent to bloody executions for his own benefit.

The influence of The Godfather on the plot structure of Wolf Hall is very clear - Thomas Cromwell's path to power by doing what needs to be done, and then the simultaneous takedown of his enemies at the story's climax, echoes that of Michael Corleone. This is hardly the first historical drama to emulate that film, the 2011-13 series The Borgias also used it as a sort of template for its first season.

The six parts of Wolf Hall are paced much slower than I was expecting of a modern drama series, being more akin to something like the BBC's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with long, unhurried scenes that build the atmosphere and allow viewers to absorb the complex plot as it unfolds. The amount of times we witness the period detail of Cromwell and other courtiers removing their hats and bowing to their social superiors reminded me of the many, many instances in Mahabharat where characters exchanged formal dialogue of "May you live long," and "My respects." Well, 94 episodes aren't just going to fill themselves, you know, mew.

As a modern, big budget filmed series, obviously Wolf Hall looks fantastic, with all the resources the BBC can bring to bear upon a drama when it wants to... and which were beyond the wildest dreams of television producers in the 1970s. Even a prestige series of its era such as Six Wives was mostly studio based, and had to rely upon the quality of its scripting and the actors to make it what it was. And the cast was impressive - in addition to Michell and Morris it also had Bernard "Toby Esterhase" Hepton as Archbishop Cranmer, and Patrick Troughton appearing as the Duke of Norfolk only a year after he left Doctor Who.

 

But even for that, Wolf Hall easily boasts a cast list to match it - in addition to those I already mentioned earlier, I would single out Anton Lesser, David "Germanicus" Robb, and Bernard Hill, who as the new Norfolk we must compare to the mighty Troughton at the height of his powers. Hill is not to be found wanting - hardly surprising considering his experience, not the least of which was playing Richard of York, giving battle in vain in the BBC Shakespeare Henry vi trilogy (1983).

Even Mark Gatiss, not exactly the actor with the greatest range, is well-suited to his oily role as Stephen Gardiner - a very different interpretation of that part from Six Wives's Basil Dignam, but both were equally fitting and equally despicable. Gatiss more-or-less disappeared from the series towards the end, but given the prominence of Dignam as an older Gardiner in Six Wives, plus its sequel Elizabeth R (1971), I expect he would return if they ever made a Wolf Hall 2: Wolf Haller.

Wolf Hall is currently available to view on the BBC iPlayer.

Manny in a Suitcase

I've been watching Manny in a Suitcase from 1967-68, a.k.a. what if ITC had a bunch of Danger Man scripts they still needed to use after Patrick McGoohan resigned? It could almost be a version of The Prisoner from some parallel universe where it was fully explained why the main character resigned from the CIA in the very first episode, and then he went on being a private investigator doing standard telefantasy plots for the next 29 episodes after that.

For a series whose production and broadcast dates almost exactly coincide with The Prisoner, this really shows the road not taken by McGoohan, with a similar film stock quality and sound design - but with such pedestrian stories, visual design and direction by comparison.

Ron Grainer did the theme tune to this one too, which since the 1990s is probably more associated with its use as the theme to TFI Friday. While the theme music is great and memorable (associations with Chris Evans notwithstanding), the title sequence itself is incredibly poor, with possibly the laziest, cheapest-looking animation (if you can even call it that) of any telefantasy series I can think of.

The fifth episode, Find the Lady, is the first really good one, and in it we get our first (but most certainly not our last) Number 2 in the shape of Patrick "Du mußt Amboß oder Hammer sein" Cargill as a police 'Commandante' in Rome. Maxwell Shaw is the villain-of-the-week, and while he never made it into The Prisoner, he was in Danger Man more than once.

On the subject of Danger Man, while I'm still not fully convinced these aren't leftover scripts being produced with a minimal number of changes, we can at least see by this point in the series that McGill isn't just a straight swap for Drake - Drake would never have resorted to using a gun as quickly as McGill does, not even in his early appearances when he was an American too. But they have a very similar world-weariness (the only thing stopping McGill resigning from his job is that he already has) and a conscience that ought to be a liability in their world of betrayals.

Episode number... er... 6 on the DVDs was originally broadcast on the 27th of September 1967 (so, for those keeping track, that's two days before Arrival), and sees McGill knocked unconscious before the title sequence, kidnapped, brought to an isolated location, and interrogated for information. They proceed to drug him and subject him to brainwashing techniques (hence the episode title - Brainwash). There's a twist where a manny who seems to be sympathetic to McGill for a bit is actually working for the kidnappers, and then it turns out that the information isn't truly what they want him for - they have something even more convoluted and nefarious in mind.

The similarities with The Prisoner only end when McGill does actually escape by the end of the episode, after a gunfight and a scene where he meets a policemanny.

This is followed by one of the best episodes of the series, The Girl Who Never Was, a gripping deconstruction of a heist story, where McGill and the other principal characters are so distrustful of one another that they start betraying each other even before they retrieve the valuable painting stolen by the Nazis in WW2. The episode is so great because it introduces clichés of the genre only to subvert them, and Bernard "M" Lee plays against type as a down-at-heel former army officer who needs the money from the heist to "be a somebody."

Anton "Susan died a year ago, Number Six" Rodgers is Number Two number two in a two-parter, Variation on a Million Bucks, playing a Russian defector who has stolen a million dollars, and who various factions are now after. Sadly this turns out to be a story that has enough plot for only one-and-a-bit episodes at best, so it feels overlong, padded and, frankly, really sags in the middle.

Better is Web with Four Spiders, which was less predictable and avoided hitting so many genre clichés as episodes immediately preceding it managed, and so held my interest more. Ray McAnally (recently seen by me as the main character in Spindoe) and John Savident are the guest actors of most note, although the latter was only in one scene. Much of the action is explicitly set in and around Manchester and Salford for no readily explained reason - our American hero McGill claims Manchester is a "city of four million people," so I expect he did about as much research as this story's writer... expected the intended American TV audience to.

Jigsaw Manny was the first outright comedy episode of the series and so was something a bit different, even if half the jokes were based on stereotypes of those wacky Italians: emotional, incorrigible womanising, large families, the mafia, etc.

The Sitting Pigeon was a return to form after a bit of a dip in quality, with a plot very obviously based on the Krays, which would have been topical in 1967, where McGill is protecting a witness against gangster brothers. The plot departed from the usual Manny in a Suitcase formula by having McGill repeatedly shown to be ahead of the villains, anticipating their moves and countering them, a change from the usual setup where he'd be on the back foot reacting to the villain-of-the-week's superior resources.

It also boasts a decently large cast of recognisable supporting actors: George "Alec Freeman" Sewell, Robin "Judge Graves" Bailey, David "Neeva" Garfield, James "Butterbur" Grout, and Joe "come off it Mr Dent" Melia. No Number 2's, but we do get Mark "o Polo" Eden from It's Your Funeral.

Moving into the second half of the series now, The Manny Who Stood Still is yet another story about a double-cross where both sides try to play McGill, this time set in Franco-era Spain. It's not very interesting, except that it features the Shapmeister himself as the main antagonist.

Somebody Loses, Somebody... Wins? is a step up, partly from being pretty obviously ripped off from inspired by le Carré's Spy Who Came in from the Cold, partly from having Philip Madoc in a small role, but mainly from its giving a prominent role to Jacqueline Pearce, with a look and mannerisms not a million space-miles from Servalan, over 10 years before Blakes 7 began. (No prizes for any readers realising that it was watching this episode that inspired this post.)

Dead Manny's Shoes gives us our third appearance by a Number 2, this time it's Derren Nesbitt, playing a henchmanny. The incidental music in this (and the following) episode are very Prisoner-like, even more so than normal for this series.

The Whisper is the best episode for a while, possibly since The Girl Who Never Was, because it avoids most of the clichéd tropes that I've been seeing a lot of. Patrick "Protect and Survive" Allen gets upstaged by the other main guest-star, Colin Blakely. This is probably a very dated, if not outright racist, episode because of its unflattering portrayal of post-colonial Africans (which is similar to the approach taken by several Danger Man plots, as well as by other films and TV series of this era), but at least there's no blackface, and the black characters (the ones with speaking parts anyway) have some depth to them.

The next bunch of episodes are another mix of seen-it-all-before and trying-something-new. Roger Delgado turns up for a very small part (one scene, maybe two scenes maximum - barely enough to warrant a mention except that it's Roger Delgado) in one of the latter, Burden of Proof, with Wolfe "Padmasambhava" Morris getting the main villain's part. It's not a great episode, but it at least tries to keep the audience guessing what's going to happen next, and ends on another pyrrhic victory for McGill, reminding me once again of the show's Danger Man origins where this was a not too uncommon occurrence.

Other actors of note seen around this point in the series include Peter "Denethor" Vaughan and a second appearance by Philip Madoc, this time as a sinister-seeming psychiatrist. No Number 2's among them, but a significant role for Justine "Girl who was Death" Lord in the best of the bunch Property of a Gentlemanny. This one stood out because McGill was up against amateur criminals, so his background and experience as a professional secret agent allowed him to be on the front foot against them - this was also the case in The Sitting Pigeon, but this is still a rare exception rather than the rule for the series.

Another standout as we approach the end of the series was The Revolutionaries, thanks largely to Hugh "Channing" Burden's turn as a former revolutionary leader of an unnamed Arabic/Middle-Eastern country (no attempt is made to black/brown Burden up, which is most certainly for the best) on the run from the current regime and hoping the publication of his memoirs will bring it down. There's enough variation from the typical way these stories go to raise this one above the crowd.

A second surprise guest appearance from Doctor Who's Season Seven shows up in the same episode in the form of that bridge location that Liz nearly fell from at the end of Ambassadors OF DEATH part three.

The last disc of the DVD set kicks off with the worst episode of the series, Three Blinks of the Eyes, which contains the dreadful cliché of McGill framed for a crime he did not commit and having to go on the run to prove his innocence to the police. It partly redeems itself with a fairly original way of resolving the plot, but the damage had been done by then and I was not filled with confidence for the final two episodes...

... But I need not have worried, as they were both pretty good. Castle in the Clouds was a comedy episode with a low-stakes farce plot featuring Edward "the Jackal" Fox as a con artist, and turning up for a single scene near the end is our fourth and final Number 2, Rachel Herbert.

The final episode, Night Flight to Andorra, is a worthy ending to the series, partly because it has one of the better plots of the series (showing it still had some surprises left in it even after 30 installments), and partly because the main antagonist is played by Peter "Gollum" Woodthorpe, but mainly because the other guest actor of note is not a Number 2 crossing over from The Prisoner, but none other than Peter Swanwick, the Supervisor himself!

This has been a weird look into a strange world - a series that feels like it's from the pre-Prisoner era of more standard espionage tales, like Danger Man (to which Manny in a Suitcase is very much the spiritual successor) and The Saint, but with a production style that is exactly contemporary with The Prisoner.

I think it just goes to show that Manny in a Suitcase is what The Prisoner could have looked and felt like, had it had anyone other than Patrick McGoohan as the creative force behind it.