#WolfHall This is like Homeland, waiting for Damian Lewis to come on and liven it up a bit."
"Henry's insufferable. Great casting choice in Lewis."
"Damian Lewis would make a very good King!"
"Thanku @lewis_damian for giving such a brilliant portrayal of how I imagine Henry might have been. Now have 2wait a whole week!"
"Wolf Hall Episode I with @lewis_damian as Henry VIII was brilliant"
"Totally absorbing and beautiful. Congrats to all concerned."
"@DamianLewisCom so looking forward to Henry taking centre stage. Mr Lewis gave a superb grin tonight, a promise of humour and evil to come ?"
"Superb, totally hooked"
"Damian Lewis looks awesome as King Henry though"
"best Henry ever!
"Damian Lewis looks awesome as King Henry though"
"Mark Rylance is brilliant in #WolfHall, but it was Damian Lewis and his assured, petulant Henry that shone, with barely a minute on screen."
"@lewis_damian as King Henry VIII - amazing cast, flawless acting and beautiful scenery #WolfHall @BBCTwo"
"Finally a credible Henry VIII, bravo "
"Mark Rylance completely wonderful but Damian Lewis stole the show with the 2 minutes he was in it"
all comments found by twitter from a happy audience
Mark Rylance is widely considered the greatest actor of his generation and Damian Lewis isn't far behind. (radio times)
Damian Lewis as Henry VIII didn’t turn up till the final five minutes, but his scene with Cromwell made the earth tremble – Lewis never raised his voice yet he was fearsome, a man with no doubt about his divine right to rule.(daily mail)
Lewis is excellent, with heaps of kingly swagger, utterly convincing, though not centre stage this time.(the guardian)
all along.-) |
| source damian-lewis.com |
I could do this endless but need to stop myself.-)
Wolf Hall seems already a huge success and critics and audience are likewise happy with the series first episode and Damian Lewis got already raves and praises for his performance as Henry VIII
and lets face it he had just five minutes on screen in this first episode and even we all know he is able
to catch a whole episode in just five minutes as we recently saw in his Homeland guest appearance
this is a new level and a higher standard because we talk about Henry VIII a role many fabulous
actors have played before and to shine in just five minutes in his own Homeland Great Britain
an audience who is always a bit more critical and I don't blame them because unfortunately
I am also very critical is an outstanding achievement which only proves its not up to Sergeant Brody
but its up to Damian Lewis who show us one more time that once he is on screen you can t take your eyes off him and he has a wide range of skills and variety...yes I am a proud an happy fan today!!
reviews....roundup
Daily Mail
There’s something oddly familiar about Shakespearean heavyweight Mark Rylance, as Thomas Cromwell, the central figure in BBC2’s Wolf Hall.
His insolence, the edge of sarcasm as he addresses ‘my lord’ or ‘my lady’, and, above all, the hint of a nasal whine in his London vowels… this blacksmith’s son resembled Blackadder’s devious servant Baldrick. But of course Cromwell’s plans are far more cunning.
The dash of humour is what makes Hilary Mantel’s two Booker-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, set in the maelstrom of Tudor politics, so entertaining.
Her hero Cromwell, an ex-mercenary turned lawyer who rises from the gutter to become the king’s chief adviser, watches the feuds and regal powerplays through sardonic eyes, with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
Without that elusive streak of humour, Wolf Hall couldn't work on television. However good the cast, however sumptuous the settings, it would become just another plod through the best-known story in English history.
But Peter Straughan’s adaptation captures it perfectly. There was a moment with Cromwell’s son, the sweet-natured but dim Gregory, when the older man summed up his philosophy in three words: ‘Believe no one.’
That explains Cromwell’s amusement. He accepts that everyone is lying, in their own various ways, and acts accordingly. By looking for the lies, he makes fools of his enemies, such as the vinegary saint Sir Thomas More and the bullying Duke of Norfolk. They know they’ve been outwitted, but they can’t see how Cromwell has done it – that’s the joke.
Straughan found a perfect way to illustrate this trait, in Cromwell’s first meeting with his patron, Cardinal Wolsey. The lawyer showed the cleric some sleight of hand with cards, an age-old shyster’s game called Find The Lady. This opening episode, the first of six, was even called Three Card Trick.
If the wit of this £7million production was a pleasant surprise, the cast was everything we’d been told to expect.
Damian Lewis as Henry VIII didn’t turn up till the final five minutes, but his scene with Cromwell made the earth tremble – Lewis never raised his voice yet he was fearsome, a man with no doubt about his divine right to rule.
The Guardian
small confession: I haven’t read it. Them, haven’t read them, because the BBC’s feverishly anticipated six-part series is adapted from the first two-thirds of Hilary Mantel’s incomplete trilogy of historical novels. They’re there weighing down the bookshelf, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, unread, two big slabs of guilt (or executioners blocks, they’d serve that purpose well). But I’ve been scared, by their massiveness, the weight of history. Perhaps you have too?
Now that Peter Straughan has condensed them for television, maybe we’re off the hook. This is TV tailor-made for a traditional Guardian reader (drama, history, fiction, Mantel, double Booker, BBC, costumes, proper cast, proper everything). With Damian Lewis – Homeland’s Brody – as Henry VIII (not unlike, though prettier, certainly trimmer, than Hans Holbein the Younger’s Henry). Chris Bryant, shadow culture minister, won’t like that: another public schoolboy with a plum part. What does an old Etonian know about power and privilege, and living by the Thames?
Whatever, Lewis is excellent, with heaps of kingly swagger, utterly convincing, though not centre stage this time. That, of course, is taken by Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance: University School of Milwaukee, private too, though he may not have paid as his father was a teacher. Boo all the same).
The Telegraph
“The final scene with Henry was pure explosive brilliance”
If the fact that BBC Two has managed to squeeze the 1,100 pages of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, into only six hours of television led you to expect just another fast-paced TV romp through Tudor history, then you were in for rather a surprise. With all the advance fuss, the opening episode might have been forgiven for trying too hard in the quest to make a big and obvious splash. In the event, what we got was something far more subtle and unhurried – but that still ended up packing an impressive dramatic punch.
The director, Peter Kosminsky, is best-known for contemporary political dramas (The Government Inspector, The Promise) that generally attract the word “controversial”. Yet, while the politics here are easily as juicy as anything in the modern world, he observes the conventions of historical drama with some care. Episode one even began in the classic way: with a caption explaining the background (“It is 1529. Henry VIII is on the throne…”) and then some blokes on horseback galloping across the countryside as a series of impeccably starry actors’ names appeared on screen.
The gallopers’ destination was York Palace, where they’d come on the king’s behalf to remove the Seal of Office from Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce). A surprisingly twinkly cardinal took the news with benevolent resignation – until a shadowy figure showed up at his side and whispered into his ear that, legally, the Seal could only be given to the Master of the Rolls. “Did you know that?” Wolsey asked him admiringly when the men retired, temporarily defeated. “Or did you make it up?”
read the full reviews and see new pictures from behind the scenes and watch clips on our main site
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see a special Henry clip for next weeks episode on damian-lewis.com
and ratings....well very good.-)
and ratings....well very good.-)
Miniseries Wolf Hall on BBC Two on Wednesday drew 3.9 million viewers in its U.K. debut, according to overnight ratings.
The performance, which amounts to a 16.5 percent share of people watching TV in Britain at the time, is a strong one for the channel, which typically gets smaller audiences than the public broadcaster's flagship network BBC One. But on Wednesday night in the 9 p.m. time slot, it outperformed Crimewatch on BBC One.
According to the BBC, the ratings make the show BBC Two's best-performing original drama series launch since Rome in 2005, which debuted with 6.6 million viewers.
Wolf Hall is BBC2’s best drama series debut in almost a decade
Wolf Hall attracted plaudits last night – and it also pulled in the viewers.
An average of 3.9 million people, a 16.5% share of the total available audience, were glued to the first episode of BBC2’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies starring Damian Lewis and Mark Rylance.
This figure is the channel's highest ever debut by a new drama series since Rome first aired on BBC2 nearly ten years ago. The swords and sandals epic co-produced with HBO secured 6.6 million, a 27.2% share, in November 2005.
Wolf Hall beat the debut of The Fall in 2013, which drew 3.5m (15.4%), and the series two premiere of Torchwood, which attracted 3.7m (14.8%) viewers in 2008.
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