Wolf Hall our weekly roundup

our personal reviews follow as usual within the next days and the full and complete reviews
can be found as always on or main site: damian-lewis.com

" Damian Lewis is perfect as Henry VIII."

"In fact is there even a role that Damian Lewis can't play incredibly well? Talented man!"

"Claire Foy and Damian Lewis are superb in Wolf Hall"

"Damian Lewis is truly a marvel"

"I reckon they could cast Damian Lewis in a car insurance advert and I'd consider it to be amongst the finest television ever made"

."Damian Lewis is giving some wonderfully spacey, weary looks in his scenes with Anne!"

"Damian Lewis puts in an amazing performance in Wolf Hall playing Henry VIII"

"His Henry VIII is powerful, beautiful and fearsome! Good luck on TvBafta! "

" It just gets better and better. Scenes between Cromwell and More were spell-binding, Damian Lewis is perfect as Henry"

"I'm literally running out of superlatives for #WolfHall - utterly brilliant, mesmerising TV."

"Wolf Hall is so brilliant I don't bother watching anything else all week - it cannot compare."

Extracts:

Take back that blue romper suit, intercept the ‘Congratulations on your new baby boy!’ cards and repaint the nursery in a shade of pink – it’s a girl. Wolf Hall shifted gear from last weeks’ salty frenzy of fireside threats and corridor-based titillation, and offered up a more sober, more sombre affair that dealt with the ramifications of one very unwanted child. “Call her Elizabeth. Cancel the jousts,” said the unhappy father. Welcome to the world, Liz.

We began with Henry (Damian Lewis) receiving bad news: he was father to one of those useless “daughter” thingies. “Call her Elizabeth and cancel the jousts,” he sighed. Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy) got to deploy her flashing eyes and defiant chin, determined to see off the vultures beginning to circle her vulnerable claim on the throne. It can’t have been terribly relaxing, trying to bear a male heir under such pressures.

Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) was busy trying to quash religious rebellion. The “Holy Maid of Kent” was charged with treason but not before making some colourful prophesies – rivalled only by snarling, swearing Duke of Norfolk (Bernard Hill) for fruitiness of language. Cromwell had spies everywhere and, in a masterful sequence of intercut interviews, brought the Holy Maid’s acolytes back into line with quiet menace. Here he was truly the calculating consigliere to Henry’s mafia don. A much bigger challenge for “the King’s serpent” was his life-long adversary Thomas More (Anton Lesser). Heads soon rolled.

There’s now only two episodes left of this magnificent production. Ignore the backlash and savour them.

and an interesting look ahead:

Best of all are those moments when Cromwell and the king are alone together. Henry, as played by Damian Lewis, is a kind of monstrous child who displays all his feelings on his face – joy, jealousy, anger, fear, grief – while fatherly Cromwell, of course, shows none of that. Yet there is between the two men, the two actors, an energy present at no other time. This is the tragic love story at the heart of ‘Wolf Hall’. Henry cannot find a woman to bear him a son and heir; Cromwell, having lost his wife and daughters to disease, appears to find a consoling immersion in his work for the king. They need each other. There is, in the fifth episode, a wonderful pair of scenes in which they are first estranged and then reconciled, Henry’s pale eye flashing with rage and then regret, Cromwell’s pale skin growing paler in the eye of his master’s tempest.