British actors David Harewood (“Homeland”), Neil Morrissey (“Line of Duty”), Katherine Kelly (“Mr Selfridge”) and Tobias Menzies (“The Honorable Woman”) have been announced to join the star-studded cast of the television adaptation of John le Carré’s novel “The Night Manager,” which started filming last month.
Co-produced by AMC with BBC One and The Ink Factory, the latest names to feature in the international production join previously-announced stars Hugh Laurie (“House”), Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers), Olivia Colman (“Broadchurch”), Tom Hollander (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest), Elizabeth Debicki (The Great Gatsby) and Academy Award-winning director Susanne Bier (In a Better World).
Harewood is most well-known for his role in Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning drama “Homeland,” whilst Morrissey was recently featured in BAFTA-nominated drama “Line of Duty.” Kelly starred in two series of Emmy-nominated British drama “Mr Selfridge,” and Menzies has made a name for himself in Golden Globe-winning drama “The Honorable Woman” and Emmy Award-winning series “Game of Thrones.”
Other names announced to appear in the espionage drama include BAFTA nominees Adeel Akhtar (“Utopia”) and Natasha Little (“Wolf Hall”), as well as Jonathan Aris (“Sherlock”) and Hannah Steele (“Wolf Hall”).
A contemporary interpretation of le Carré’s 1993 novel – and the first television adaptation of a le Carré novel in more than 20 years – “The Night Manager” mini-series will bring together love, loss and revenge in a complex story of modern criminality. The series follows former British soldier Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston) who is recruited by an intelligence operative named Burr (Colman) to navigate the shadowy recesses of Whitehall and Washington where an unholy alliance operates between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. To infiltrate the inner circle of lethal arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Laurie), which includes girlfriend Jed (Debicki) and an associate named Corcoran (Hollander), Pine must himself become a criminal.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By ANDREW GOLDMAN
March 5, 2015 3:36 p.m. ET
HAS THERE EVER LIVED a lustier, more murderous cast of characters than the Tudors? The infamy of the English dynasty owes largely to the treacherous 38-year reign of Henry VIII, but an even more compelling character may be his enabler and brain for hire, Thomas Cromwell, the commoner who rose in his court to become a kind of Henry whisperer, an advisor renowned for his ability to read the king’s mind like a book. For 500 years, Cromwell was viewed as a great heavy in the Tudor drama, a character whose lure became irresistible to the British novelist Hilary Mantel. “When I was researching, I started off with a fairly conventional viewpoint: that Cromwell’s a villain but an interesting villain,” Mantel says. “Then I began to discover other things and modified my view very fast.” Cromwell was the consummate fixer—in Mantel’s words, “the man to cut through some legal entanglement that’s ensnared you for three generations, or talk your sniffling little daughter into the marriage she swears she will never make.” Mantel also found him unusually sympathetic: After the deaths of his wife and daughters, he went on to support his large extended family. She devoted eight years and a thousand pages to novelizing the first 51 years of Cromwell’s life with Wolf Hall, released in 2009, and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, published three years later.
The books made Mantel a literary star—the first British author to win the Man Booker Prize twice. Naturally, film producers came calling. “There were many suitors, yes,” she says. But her books are serious works of historical fiction. The Tudors—notably in the Showtime series of the same name and the filmed adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl—had been transformed in the popular imagination as characters scheming and copulating through airbrushed Hollywood bodice rippers (“bonkbusters,” as the genre is known in England). Mantel feared what would become of her Cromwell in the wrong hands, how tempting it might be to drown him in an orgiastic, Game of Thrones–style bloodbath.
One suitor stood out from the rest: Colin Callender, the British-born producer who’d just left HBO after 21 years to start his own production company. As the president of HBO films, Callender had overseen the production of John Adams, a miniseries based on David McCullough’s biography. Mantel loved the seriousness of the project—the fact that it starred Paul Giamatti, not Tom Cruise—and that it made colonial life look as cold and austere as history tells us it was. Callender, she trusted, wouldn’t make the Tudors, in her word, too “cute.”
While devouring Wolf Hall, Callender recognized something novel, but also enticingly familiar, about Cromwell. As he’d seen firsthand at HBO, The Sopranos had irrevocably darkened the public’s taste and tolerance of its television protagonists, opening the doors for the likes of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, Ray Donovan and, Callender imagined, the centuries-despised Thomas Cromwell. “Audiences are increasingly interested in characters who live on both sides of the moral equation,” Callender says. “I thought, here was the way to reinvigorate the television historical drama for the post–Sopranos, Breaking Bad world.” The rights to Mantel’s book became the first acquisition at Callender’s Playground Entertainment. Now he just needed actors with the gifts to sell Mantel’s portrayal of the insatiable Henry and his deft consigliere, Cromwell.
THERE ARE MANY who swear that Mark Rylance, the man Callender tapped to play Cromwell, is the greatest actor alive, that seeing him embody the small-time drug dealer Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jerusalem is as close to a religious experience as the theater can offer. At lunch on a Pasadena, California, hotel patio, Rylance blushes, looking at his feet while Damian Lewis, who plays Wolf Hall’s Henry VIII, testifies to his brilliance. “I don’t know who the greatest actor is—it’s kind of a ridiculous notion—but if you haven’t seen Mark onstage, I’m here to tell you he’s extraordinary,” Lewis says. “He’s kind of cornered the market in redefining characters that we think we know.”
As they are both actors who spent their early professional years performing the Bard at the Royal Shakespeare Company, it might be tempting for American audiences to toss Rylance and Lewis into the same classically trained British actor bin. But just eyeballing them sitting next to each other suggests that their social circles rarely intersect. Rylance, who arrived wearing his trademark fedora, comes across as a theater bohemian, with silver Navajo bracelets on each wrist (he’s actively involved in Survival International, a group committed to protecting tribal people around the world) and a short-sleeved patterned bowling shirt; Lewis, the Eton-educated, St. John’s Wood–reared son of London privilege, is chic in a tailored dark blue shirt, designer jeans and a Rolex, and carries himself with a natural masculine confidence. Given that Rylance has spent his life projecting his voice onstage—he’s won three Tonys and two Oliviers—it’s surprising that he speaks so softly one has to lean in to hear him, even sitting a few feet away. (As a child, Rylance suffered from an intense shyness that kept him from speaking a word until he was 6.)
Through Wolf Hall, Rylance has taken on the job that Mantel began—redefining Cromwell, saving him even, almost 500 years after he was beheaded on trumped-up charges of treason. Rylance, best described as sprightly, might not be the first actor who comes to mind to play Cromwell; in Wolf Hall he’s a physically imposing brute who had likely killed a man or two in close combat during his mysterious younger days and was depicted in the enduring Hans Holbein likeness as a bruiser, fleshy and austere under his black bonnet. “I’m aware I’m not so big as Cromwell is physically, but I can take on psychological weight,” Rylance says. Playing bigger isn’t a problem for an actor of Rylance’s gifts; in fact, just the day before, he’d been sitting with Steven Spielberg, discussing how he will play the titular big friendly giant in The BFG, the director’s upcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book. He’s thought deeply about the mechanics of the Cromwell-Henry relationship and came upon an unexpected insight when he encountered a man who keeps grizzly bears in Montana. “He said to me, the thing with bears is they are incredibly emotional, they’re made of emotions,” Rylance says. “You have to be very clear and very loving towards this bear, which is emotionally like a 15- or 16-year-old autistic child. I compare Damian’s Henry to that.”
Orlando Sentinel
By Hal Boedeker
Staff writer
January 19, 2015
Good news for "Doc Martin" fans.
Martin Clunes, star of that series, will play Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in "Arthur & George," a series from PBS' "Masterpiece" later this year.
"Masterpiece" announced new offerings Monday at the Television Critics Association meeting in Pasadena, Calif.
"How perfect that 'Arthur & George' will air on PBS, as public television has been such a wonderful home to 'Doc Martin,' " Clunes said in a statement. "I'm sure that our new series will be a treat for 'Doc Martin' fans, and for everyone who enjoys a terrific drama."
The three-part "Arthur & George" is based on Julian Barnes' novel about a half-Indian son of a vicar. Doyle investigates whether the vicar's son has been framed for a crime.
A modern-version of Sherlock Holmes with Benedict Cumberbatch has been a major hit for "Masterpiece."
"Masterpiece" also will present "Home Fires" about women living in a rural British village during World War II while the men are away fighting. The cast includes Samantha Bond, who plays Lady Rosamund Painswick on "Downton Abbey," and Francesca Annis of "Reckless."
"Masterpiece" executive producer Rebecca Eaton was taking a well-deserved victory lap as the show flourishes.
"For 'Masterpiece' to be the No. 1 show on PBS in its 44th year is historic,” she said in a statement. "We are proud of the work of our British partners and grateful to all of our American supporters."
"Masterpiece" scored a 3.6 national household rating (live+7) in 2014. That rating is up 80 percent from 2010 -- an astonishing figure as the TV universe fragments.
"Masterpiece," which is presented by WGBH Boston, has expanded to offer "Grantchester" at 10 p.m. Sundays after "Downton Abbey." That entertaining mystery with James Norton and Robson Green started this week.
And "Masterpiece" has potentially one of the year's biggest shows: "Wolf Hall," an adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novels, on April 5. Emmy-winner Damian Lewis ("Homefront") plays King Henry VIII, and Tony-winner Mark Rylance is Thomas Cromwell.
PBS had other drama plans, not related to "Masterpiece." Public television plans a six-episode drama about Civil War nurses. The show will film in Virginia air on Sundays starting in winter 2016.
SUNDAY EXPRESS
Published: 00:01, Sun, January 11, 2015
By DAVID STEPHENSON
We love our period drama. A glimpse of the schedules, particularly during autumn and winter, reveals a surfeit of costume delights, from Downton Abbey to Call The Midwife, from The Musketeers to Channel 4’s soon-to-be-seen Indian Summers.
However, the quality can vary wildly and so can the attention to detail, with the viewers often wondering, given the modern language used in dialogue, whether they are actually watching a drama set, for instance, two centuries ago.
Worry ye not, viewer, about the quality on offer later this month in BBC2’s Wolf Hall. Adapted from the best-selling historical novels of Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, this six-part series about the political chicanery of the Tudor court raises the bar for its costume rivals.
It has one of the performances of the year from Mark Rylance, in the lead role of Thomas Cromwell. He is ably assisted by Damian Lewis, pictured, as Henry VIII, and Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey. Not a regular TV face, Rylance is known for his striking performances in the theatre, and is a two-time Olivier Awards winner.
As the author Mantel herself points out, “Mark Rylance gives a mesmeric performance as Cromwell, its effect building through the series.”As lawyer to Wolsey, Mantel describes him as both “hero, and anti-hero”, which indeed he is, although by the close of episode one you will be rooting for Rylance’s Cromwell all the way.
Unlike many authors, who are often indifferent about TV adaptations, Mantel is inspired. She says: “It’s a privilege. It’s illuminating, exciting. It’s not, as people sometimes think, in any way odd or jarring. It seems to continue a natural process that goes on in the writer’s head. “As you write, you see and hear. To have the images transferred to the outside world, to hear the voices externally, is a kind of magic, but it’s also a logical step.”
The choice of director is inspired, too. To enhance the political intrigue of a Tudor royal household, Peter Kosminsky, whose work mostly includes factual dramas, has given the production an authentic, contemporary feel.
But where do you begin with two 500-page novels? “I guess it starts with Peter Straughan’s script,” says the director. “Many people have done incredible work on this show.
Many on it acknowledge that these are some of the best scripts they have ever read. They are the best I’ve read. I knew the books, but to turn that into six hours of TV is an extraordinary feat.”
The stories are about “revenge”, says Straughan. “It’s also there in the novels, but that’s the theme I decided to run with. Thomas sets out for revenge for the fall of Wolsey, and the drama is about the consequences that flow from that.”
Rylance hasn’t done a major TV lead since 2005’s excellent The Government Inspector, about tragic whistleblower Dr David Kelly, which was also directed by Kosminsky. Why return to TV? Rylance is breathtakingly honest. “My wife said the books were very good! And I liked working with Peter, and it was obviously a wonderful part.”
But what was it specifically about the role that drew him to it? “There can be few characters in literature that keep most of their judgments and thoughts to themselves. He doesn’t reveal it, or show very much. I expect a lot of people who have read the books will watch the show, so to manifest him in a way that wouldn’t limit their imaginations of what he was like, was quite a challenge. I also wanted him to be a real person.”
