Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall, a British miniseries about the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the Court of King Henry VIII (based on the books Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel), is currently airing Sunday nights on PBS as part of Masterpiece. Being connoisseurs of all things British, Arsenic Pie and I took to the internet for a bit of a chat about the show the other night. The bottom line is that we are both enjoying it, but we are also both fans of Tudor history. If the Brits aren't your bag....you may find the series a bit slow. Think of it as West Wing: Tudor Edition.

Maggie Cats: Have you read the books?

Arsenic Pie: I have not, have you?

Maggie Cats: I read Bring Up the Bodies for book club--I remember enjoying it, but I have a strong background in Tudor history from college, so it wasn't all that revelatory. What the show is doing character wise is striking me as more interesting.

Arsenic Pie: I took a British history class my freshman year. So I'm pleased to see Henry VIII as appropriately gouty and dickish.

Maggie Cats: You're an expert!

Arsenic Pie: I am totes the expert.

Maggie Cats: Let's talk about Henry; even though he doesn't appear hardly at all until the second episode, he's the reason people tune in.

Arsenic Pie: I love me some Damian Lewis. He plays a good asshat. See: The Forsyte Saga.

Maggie Cats: This is one of the more "realistic" portrayals of Henry I've seen. Henry was somewhat of a study in contradictions. Smart, but a slave to his id. He loved music and poetry (and wrote it) but also loved the outdoors and sport. I feel like this is the first time I have seen the character of Henry VIII portrayed as a smart thinking man in addition to the physical stuff. And can I just say, thank god they cast an ACTUAL GINGER THANK YOU.

Arsenic Pie: They're a dying breed. They're rare. They need to be utilized before they go extinct.

Maggie Cats: Have you heard about the Ginger Preservation Project?? *she said ringing the doorbell and holding out a flyer*

Arsenic Pie: Where can I sign up? Do you have an info booth? Is it the one located next to SPEW? 

Maggie Cats: We have our own facilities at Strawberry Preserves. We need to get the word out. But I digress. What do you think of Lewis' Henry?

Arsenic Pie:I think he is perfect for the part. Usually Henry is all bloated and walking around burping while he gesticulates with a turkey leg, but Lewis has got this on lock. *Let it be noted here that AP is gesticulating wildly with a turkey leg*

Maggie Cats: It's true that he is either portrayed as fat and slow or hot forever like in The Tudors. He's usually shown as a caricature. What about Mark Rylance as Cromwell? I love how he is quiet, but you still absolutely get his genius and ability to read people.

Arsenic Pie: I cannot take my eyes off him. Not that he's the epitome of male hotness, but he's really mesmerizing. I pay the most attention to him in all the scenes, even when he's sharing screen time with Jonathan Pryce.

Maggie Cats: You can really see the mind working behind the actor's eyes. Cromwell is quiet, but is always looking around and taking everything in. FOR FUTURE BLACKMAIL.

Arsenic Pie: I have always loved Jonathan Pryce. I like how he was Juan Peron. He is so not dictatory but he was great in that too.

Maggie Cats: He was pretty great as Wolsey, who honestly I found kind of pathetic. He just...didn't get it. Wolsey didn't understand the game or how to play it.  I don't know what dictatory means, but I am going to smile and nod.

Arsenic Pie: Yes, smile and nod. It is the best way to do things.

Maggie Cats: I got that part down.

Arsenic Pie: I'm super excited about Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn. She was just all kinds of crazy on Upstairs Downstairs.

Maggie Cats: She is doing really well; her Anne is also really different from Annes we've seen. Manipulative, but not super great at it. More like a spoiled child. I love it.

Arsenic Pie: It's because she's coo-coo.

Maggie Cats: Also French.

Arsenic Pie: Next thing you know she'll surrender. Because you know France. Off screen she eats cheese and complains about how much she hates Americans. But basically, it's a strong cast overall, and Mark Rylance is ruling it.

Maggie Cats: Definitely, I am just trying to enjoy the parts where he is large and in charge before it all goes south. It didn't really pay to be friends with Henry VIII. Well, maybe for a little while but then CHOP CHOP.

Arsenic Pie: Hey, he didn't kill ALL of his wives. Some of them died natural deaths.

Maggie Cats: Four of them, actually.

Arsenic Pie: Name them. Name his wives in order and the manner of their death.

Maggie Cats: Catherine of Aragon died of a broken heart. Anne B. went chop chop. Jane Seymour was ripped apart by her baby. Katherine Parr also chop chop. Anne of Cleves was too ugly so she got divorced and actually got to grow old. And the last Katherine lived to be awesome. I...might have mixed the names and orders of some of the Katherines.

Arsenic Pie: Catherine Howard was annulled and executed.

Maggie Cats: Whatever. CLOSE ENOUGH.

Arsenic Pie: Nobody ever talks about the women he DIDN'T marry. I mean historians are so biased.

Maggie Cats: There are simply too many. But at least everyone in Court had the same strain of hepatitis, right?

Arsenic Pie: Unless it mutated and turned into hepabola, yes.

Maggie Cats: So what else about the show has struck you? I'll put a shout out to the costuming which is impeccable.

Arsenic Pie: The fact that it's almost Shakespearean.

Maggie Cats: It's Shakespeare before there was a Shakespeare.

Arsenic Pie: Like you could put this side-by-side with one of the royal plays and it would hold up.

Maggie Cats: Really, what else was there to do in those days except plot and backstab and manipulate? NOTHING.

Arsenic Pie: NOTHING THEY DID NOT HAVE NETFLIX OR SMARTPHONES. Frankly I feel technology has saved us from beheadings. I would be insane without cable for sure. Imagine if someone took a selfie at Anne Boleyn's execution.

Maggie Cats: The world is fortunate there is cable. Else I would have conquered it by now out of boredom. We'd be like Pinkie and the Brain. I'm the Brain.

Arsenic Pie: I'm Pinkie.

Maggie Cats: This is why we work. So, any final thoughts?

Arsenic Pie: Wolf Hall is definitely worth checking out even if you are not into the regular PBS viewing crowd And I cast no aspersions on anyone because 80 percent of my PBS viewing is making fun of the people on Antiques Roadshow.

Maggie Cats: And definitely worth checking out for the multi-layered character portrayals and fantastic acting.

Arsenic Pie: I am really proud of PBS. They've like unintentionally become a bulwark of critically acclaimed drama.

Maggie Cats: BBC America is like their younger, slower sibling.

Arsenic Pie: But PBS still has the corner on British programming. They get stuff from ITV because they don't have to be brand loyal. So I can watch Mr. Selfridge and yell at the people in corsets.

(the conversation then devolved into a discussion of Jeremy Piven, WETA UK, and other facets of British television. It's best we wrap it up here, gentle reader.)

The Hollow Crown Part Two: It's Only a Flesh Wound

In the Yeare of our Lorde Fourteen Hundred and Plague, Henry IV reigns. He has been the king since taking the crown of Richard II to become the first Lancaster king of England.

Willie Shakes wrote this aroundabouts 1597, but there's really no way of knowing for sure, since Willie Shakes didn't actually exist, amiright? 

First off, I want to start by saying that one thing I loved about this production was that the Welsh characters (Hotspur, Lord Percy, et al) actually sound Welsh. A Welsh accent being what it is, it sounds very similar to what is known in the biznit as OP. That is, Original Pronunciation. That is, what Shakespeare and his contemporaries likely actually sounded like when they spoke Early Modern English. I thought this was a really clever way of sticking some OP goodness into the production, instead of everyone flouncing around with posh RP pronunciation. Not that I am down on posh RP. I can do it like a boss and I often launch into it upon a fortnight with little provocation. Whether it was director Sam Mendes's intention or not to give us a little OP to go with our supper, it was not lost on me and 'twas most appreciated, good sirrah.


During the course of Henry IV, Part I, the aging king has more than his fair share of Medieval England Problems. He just could not wait to be king, and now that he's got the job, he's finding it comes with a lot of work-related stress. He so thought that pillaging the Holy Land to absolve himself of guilt over Richard II's murder would be therapeutic for him, but as it turns out, not so much. Those pesky Scottish and Welsh subjects are agitating for autonomy AGAIN, and even though the Percy (Northumberland) family helped him overthrow Richard II, Henry feels like they're being completely unreasonable, too. 

#99Problems

The title of the play is kind of a misnomer. It really isn't about Henry IV at all. He's a presence in the movie, but his part is very small and he's much more of a background character, and he's honestly not a terribly interesting character. Jeremy Irons is the type of seasoned, veteran actor dude to pull off the part and make it memorable and significant. Henry wouldn't work at all without someone like Irons in the role, and if there isn't a good Henry to bring urgency to Hal's situation, then play just doesn't work. Mostly, he's concerned about the succession and his legacy after he dies, and he spends a lot of time ranting and nagging Hal about straightening up. There's not a whole lot of depth to him as a human being in this part of Henry IV, and the way the character is written is sort of static and uninteresting, but his story is more or less the engine of the play. So, in sum, Henry's way more boring in this play than he is in Richard II. Apparently, he goes batshit in Part II. We can look forward to that. 

Really, the play is more about the dichotomy between Prince Hal and Henry Percy (Hotspur). I'll let the professors parse out the complexity of their relationship, but it's no coincidence that they share a name (Henry) and similar personality traits. However, they express themselves in different ways. While Hal sows the proverbial wild oats of youth in taverns, drinking wine and banging whores, Hotspur spends most of his time ignoring his wife (Lady Mary Crawley herself, Michelle Dockery) and fuming over the indignities Henry has been subjecting the Percy family to. They're both idiots, but Hal only emerges as the champion of the play because he wises up. 

Back to the plot. Adding to Henry's troubles is that his son, Prince Hal (later Henry V) is a drunk frat boy. By "drunk frat boy," I mean he is fucking awesome. In case you were wondering why Tom Hiddleston isn't Loki-ing around on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (that is fucking annoying, Clovis), it seems he's given up on trying to take over freaking Space Norway in favor rejecting the throne of England for dipsomania and potential VD, and also inadvertently making your pants spontaneously fly off.  

Hal spends most of his time carousing with his friend Ned Poins (who is also kind of hot), and a fat old drunken whoring nobleman. No, that's not Hagrid's midget cousin. That's Sir John Falstaff (Simon Russell Beale), who I'm guessing needs little introduction. Falstaff is what you'd expect. He's uncouth and drinks a bunch. There are a lot of shenanigans. And nonsense. And also foolhardiness. 

Ahh. If only you'd seen my Santa Claus back in '86.

Anyhoo. Harry Percy, or Hotspur, is emo, but Henry thinks that he'd rather have Hotspur for a son because Hotspur does his noble duty and goes out and kills Scottish people like he's supposed to, whereas his own son is drunk at the bar. Kids these days.

At the start of the play, Henry whines about how his son is a layabout and a good-for-nothing and a slacker. These mid-millenials. Interrupting his self-pity-a-thon are Hotspur and Lord Percy. Hotspur's been out battling the Douglas at Holmedon like a good laddie. Henry wants Hotspur to return the Scottish prisoners that Hotspur took in action, and Hotspur is like no. Hotspur wants the king to ransom his wife's brother, Edward Mortimer, who's been taken prisoner by Owen Glendower (most Welsh name ever). The king goes ballistic, basically because he's a control freak, and insults Lord Percy and Hotspur. 

Hotspur: The king is being a total asshat.

Lord Percy: I know, right?

Remember when the Earl of Northumberland helped Henry overthrow Richard II? Yeah, those were good times. The Percys sure do remember that Henry owes his throne to the support of nobles like themselves, and they are PISSED that Henry is dissing them.

MEANWHILE back at the whorehouse, Falstaff decides that he, Hal and Poins should rob a merry band of travelers who are making their way into the shire. Because reasons. Hal and Points decide that that is not enough highjinksery for them, so they don't show up to meet Falstaff at the appointed time, and Falstaff has to do the highwayman thing all on his own. Falstaff robs the travelers (who really deserve to be robbed if they can have their asses kicked by Falstaff), and then Hal and Poins jump out from behind some trees to surprise Falstaff and steal the money that Falstaff stole. It's like Robin Hood, but postmodern. Hal returns the money to Falstaff, and they all go back to drinking and wenching. All is right with the world. 

Falstaff: You! Elf! Get back to making toys!

Hal: And more wine!

Falstaff! Yes! More wine!

Hal: And more whores!

Falstaff: Yes. More whores, more wine, and more toys. I said now, elf!

Over at castle Northumberland, Hotspur is raging against the machine. His obsessive anger with the king has not gone unnoticed by his wife, Kate.

Lady Kate Percy's Diary:

Weather: Bleak.

Shags: 0. If possible to have negative shag balance, am probably getting there.

Weight: Same. However, have been eating cold roasted peacock sandwiches, butter directly out of churn, and some cheese off wheel when servants are asleep. If someone would invent ice cream, would be grateful. Weight gain: imminent. Am defo not preggers.

Harry Status: Continues raging. Day 7 of tirade. Am hoping tires himself out but has been up all night ranting about king. 

"Don't marry the Welsh guy," said friends. Wonder if that cheesemonger in Surrey is still single...

In a play comprised almost entirely of dudebros, Kate Percy has one of the best monologues in the whole damn thing -- actually, it's one of the best monologues in Shakespeare.  Kate is, of course, played by Michelle Dockery. She's a clever choice for the part because it's giving the people what they want, and the people want more Downton Abbey. 

This is for all of you Downton Abbey fans who can't stand to see Lady Mary with anyone but Matthew.

Hotspur's all up in arms this time because he got a letter from one of his noble kinsemen in re: Hotspur's request for them to join in Hotspur's plan to overthrow the thing. Survey says: No. Kate threatens to castrate Hotspur if he doesn't tell her what he's up to, then he insults her, tells her he doesn't love her, and throws her on the bed. Real winner you've got there, Kate! Hotspur's worried that his kinsmen will betray him and tattletale to Henry, so he leaves to go plot his rebellion, and tells Kate that she can, like, join him in a few days or... he'll call her or...whatever.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!

Because Henry IV has got a serious case of he oldz, he's really concerned that he's going to die and leave England without a decent king. The guy is one rebellion away from a triple bypass. He's got his little spies everywhere, and he's aware that Hotspur & Friends are a-plottin' and he's got to get Hal to sober up long enough to walk a straight line and maybe get stabby with a few rebellious folks. 

Henry: Ohhh, my prostate.

Hal: Soo...just to clarify. No hookers ever again or just tone it down a bit?

Henry: Ahh! My acid reflux.

Hal: Okay. Bad time to ask. Did you see I killed that guy-

Henry: Shut up! 

Henry summons Hal into his throne room, and Hal shows up and Henry is is all like, 

Henry lays some smack down on Hal and tells him this drunkenness, tomfoolery, monkey business, frequenting of strumpets, and general errant knavery have got to stop. LIKE RIGHT THIS MINUTE. He tells Hal that he is just like Richard II (only Henry hasn't had him imprisoned yet) and thinks Hal is going to go over to Hotspur's side in the rebellion. Henry's speech itself kind of goes on and on without much point, but it spurs (ha!) emotion in Hal.

 Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking Peace Corps.

Hal reassures Henry that he's got it all wrong. He swears to fight against Hotspur and to take any action necessary to prevent Hotspur & Friends from taking over their rightfully...er...stolen crown.

And THEN Sir Walter Blunt enters and alerts them to the fact that Douglas, who's leading the Scottish rebels, has joined forces with the English rebels near Shrewsbury and they're getting ready to attack. OH NOES. 

Over at Castle Glendower in Wales, Percy and the other rebels have gathered to plot their battle against the king, and this is where we meet Glendower's daughter, Lady Mortimer, who's married to Kate Percy's brother. Yeah, I think I've got that right.  She doesn't speak any English, and Mortimer doesn't speak any Welsh, and neither of them have bothered to learn the other's language for, you know, relationship purposes. I guess that would require literacy. Hey, don't judge. I'm sure they connect on other levels. They gather in the evening to have a fancy dinner party before they all die horrible deaths or are executed or torn apart limb from limb or are banished and whatnot.

This isn't Chanel? Then WTF is it? "A skinned muppet"? Okay. What is a muppet?

Lady Mortimer doesn't have any lines per se in the play, but she does get to babble incoherently in Welsh. Needless to say, I would be all over that part like it was my job. Lady Mortimer decides to give a concert for the rebel alliance, and there's a moment where Kate and Hotspur appear to set aside their differences for the sake of snuggletime. They sneak off during Lady Mortimer's song for a make-up quickie.

Weather: Continues bleak.

Shags: 1. Harry. Against cold stone wall in dank castle. Bum: a bit cold.

This Enya music is making me horny. 

That brings us up to Act IV, or thereabouts. This is where it starts to get real. It's all Empire vs. Rebel Alliance from here on out. 

In Shrewsbury, which is near Wales, Hotspur, Worcester (pronounced Wooster) and Douglas are discussing their strategy when this guy shows up and tells Hotspur that his father is too sick to fight that day. Really? You've got fat old fuckin' Falstaff waddling onto the battlefield to support Hal and the king, but Lord Percy can't toddle his sorry ass to the fight? I call shenanigans. AS IF THAT IS NOT ENOUGH BAD NEWS FOR ONE EFFING DAY, Vernon shows up and tells Hotspur that Henry's other son, Prince John, is, like totally headed their way with a bunch of soldiers, AND the king AND Hal are on their way with a bunch of other soldiers. Vernon has seen Hal on a horse, and he looks completely regal and is totes ready for Hotspur to baaaariiiing it. 

SPARTAAAAAAANNNS!!

AND AND AND. Glendower is bailing. Well, I guess he's not technically bailing, but he can't assemble enough forces together before the battle. This would maybe be a good time to BACK THE FUCK OFF, but Hotspur says NOPE. We are going to fight this thing to the end, and he expresses a wish to have a mano a mano confrontation with Hal. 

Hotspur: We're going to win, right?
Dudebro: Oh, yeah. Totally! 
Hotspur: YOLO!

The battle is actually pretty cool, and should, I hope, satisfy all the stage combat and SCA nerds out there. It's not exactly Orcs vs. Elves or Harry vs. Voldemort (I said it), but it's pretty exciting and historically accurate from a combat perspective. Hal is wounded, but he's got his vow to redeem himself to keep in mind, and, though wounded, he meets Hotspur in one-on-one combat and kills him.

Yeah, that's right. I stabbed you. Mind THAT gap, bitch.

I'm not sure who delivers the tragic news to Kate Percy, but I'm guessing she's sensing a theme. 

The rebellion thus quashed, and the rebels either killed in battle or executed, King Henry is able to hang onto his ill-gotten throne and Falstaff lives to drink and whore another day. So, a net gain for our fair city.

Obviously, the play is much richer than what I've presented here for you, and there's way too much going on in the movie for me to have room for to recap for you fine folks here. There's a new episode airing this week, and that will be Henry IV, Part II: The Wonder Years. Head over to PBS.org for more info.

It's a Game of Thrones!

The Henriad

It should come to no surprise to my fellow erudite TV Sluts that the folks across the pond are adept at creating one hell of a Shakespeare adaptation.  After all, THEY INVENTED SHAKESPEARE. It should also come as no surprise to any Anglophiles that Ben Whishaw is adorable and an amazingly talented actor. Anyone who has seen him in The Hour or Bright Star knows what a mad gifted artist he is.

Usurping my crown is, like, way not cool, bro.

But did you also know that Tom Hiddleston (aka our favorite comic villain, Loki)  is also hot and is playing Prince Hal in the BBC adaptation of The Henriad, entitled The Hollow Crown, airing in the U.S. on most PBS stations? That is a true fact that I just said. 

Drinking and whoring? Yeah, I can handle that. 

Yes, the Brits have gone and done it again. If you're feeling like you need a brush-up on your Willie Shakes, and you weren't able to make it up to the Stratford Festival in Ontario this year, take heart. The BBC adaptation is, SHOCKINGLY, very good. I have borne witness to so much bad Shakespeare in my life, that it does me little heart good to see it done well. Last night, PBS aired the oft-forgotten Richard II. True, it doesn't have the name-recognition and cache of the more popular and commonly performed plays, but it has a driving plot and some damn good soliloquies. We all know that performing Shakespeare is the litmus test of an English-speaking actor, and I was pleased with the Richard II cast. Shakespeare really is one of those cases where the actors' job basically is to get out of the way of the language. In this production, the cast performs with such honesty and the language percolates off the actors' tongues with crystal clarity, which just makes the whole production that much more compelling. 

The plot of Richard II is thus:  Richard II (Whishaw) was the last Plantagenet king of England. ("What's a Plantagenet," you ask? Go back to school!). He is replaced by the first Lancaster king, Henry Bolingbroke/Henry IV (Rory Kinnear). Richard is a young and ambitious king, but he's very wasteful and he spends too much time on buying useless crap from Italy. He also doesn't choose his counselors very well, which seems to have been a common thread among European royals. Richard starts renting out parcels of land to wealthy noblemen to raise money to fund his wars against Ireland. (That England. Always picking on the Irish.) He also seizes the land of his well-respected uncle, John of Gaunt (FUCKING PATRICK STEWART), after John of Gaunt dies.

But wait! There's more! Richard has a cousin named Henry Bolingbroke, who was John of Gaunt's son, and he is PISSED. Not only did Richard seize his land, but he had also exiled Henry six years earlier. 

You were in Skyfall? No way. Me, too.

Richard leaves England to fight a war in Ireland. (Again. WTF. Stop with the Ireland invading already.) While he's gone, Henry assembles an army and invades England. Richard's allies all desert him in his absence, and he returns to England. Henry takes him prisoner and ensconces him in a castle in Pomfret, where he languishes until a plot against Henry unfolds. An assassin takes it upon himself to murder Richard. Henry now feels like he has blood on his hands and jaunts off to Jerusalem to absolve himself of sin. Because that'll help.

I guess that didn't go well.

The only thing that bugged me about this production was, at the end, Richard's body is dragged into Henry's throne room (which is apparently where he sits all day...yawn). The scene pans up from two men standing over Richard's diapered dead body, to a sculpture of Christ and two disciples that is hanging from the ceiling. I was like, come on. COME ON. Come, on really? It's not that I found that offensive in a religious way (since I'm pretty much a heathen). I simply found it heavy-handed from an artistic standpoint. Richard II was murdered by political enemies, but martyred? Really? CAMMAHHHN.

The next installment of The Hollow Crown is Henry IV Part I, with Jeremy Irons as the much older Henry IV and Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal. Michelle Dockery is apparently taking a break from being all weepy over Matthew to make an appearance as Lady Percy. 

I may be too sexy for this crown.

The Hollow Crown is airing on PBS as part of Great Performances. You can watch it online  or check your local PBS listings for air dates and times. 

Is this why I had a dream that I was Rosalind in As You Like It last night? Imma gonna go with yes