Shardlake

Shardlake offers up an intriguing plot with an excellent cast, it can at times lack a captivating spark to reach the next level. However, provides enough interest to keep you engaged to the end. I feel this is more an intro into the characters and expect more layers to unfold should more series be green lit. Certainly provides the opportunity for different stories to be told.

Sean Bean lacked much character development and was massively underutilised. Whilst Arthur Hughes was very impressive and kept me interested throughout.

Overall certainly worth a watch and with time I expect the show to improve with more series.

As a huge fan of the Shardlake books I was excited to see this production. It did not disappoint for acting and entertainment but I did feel it was abbreviated and could have been a couple of episodes longer. I also felt that the addition of a rather unlikely number of black characters did take away a very important element of how the black apothecary monk stood out as different; that said it didn't really effect the plot too much. The thing that did annoy me was the replacing of the character Mark Poer Shardlake's manservant, with Jack Barak, a character who makes his first appearance in the follow up novel "Dark Fire" I assume this is done to allow a continuing partnership in the next Shardlake series but this meant adjusting the ending of this series. So unnecessary! We are not children, we can cope with the introduction of new characters.

There is more to putting a drama like this together than sinister music, sinister looks and a bit of running about.

The shame about SHARDLAKE is that the budget is there and the actor are there, the script however isn't.

The adaptation takes a strong book by C J SANSOM and makes it a meandering mess of a thing, a basic detective procedural laced with long exposition sections in the refectory, replete with lingering glances, meaningful stares and moody music.

The music is a sub Hans Zimmer smush of broody brace and tense strings that doesn't really drive the action, just paints it in different variants of beige.

It's a diverting watch but could have been so much better in the hands of writers and directors who trusted the material.

I'm going to keep it short and sweet. Watched the first episode and some of the ingredients were good and had potential like Sean Bean and Arthur Hughes characters. Also it takes place in such an interesting time in Englands history which is exciting because there are not too many shows set at the time of the Dissolution of the monasteries, it's a show with a serious tone, so it should definitely take the historic time it's based in seriously right?? Nope it fails miserably at that. Such a waste, I didn't even bother with the next episode. If you want to watch a better show that is similar I would watch The Pillars of the Earth.

Ohh well, I wonder what other amazing books Disney can ruin next.

Shardlake is about a murder mystery in 16th century England during Henry VIIIs dismantling of the monasteries, and as a History teacher of course I had to watch this. I was a bit concerned that it would overlap The Tudors too much but luckily this is not the case and this series and its mystery stands on its own two feet very well.

Sean Bean is given ridiculously little screen time and at first it got me irritated and I thought this was another one of those series where you hire a famous actor for 5 minutes and live of their reputation, but this is not the case and my mood improved as I got stuck into the mystery.

I was happy to see Anthony Boyle again after just seeing his star-making performances in Masters of the Air and Manhunt, but I believe that co-starring roles like this are now a thing of the past for him. His performance is pretty good as John Barak, but the true star of the show is Arthur Hughes as Shardlake. He is the star of every scene he is in, and in Holmes-like faction he solves the mystery one step at a time while remaining confident and charismatic in a way that captivates the viewer. A revelation indeed, this works really well, excellent casting.

All in all, even though this is nowhere near as good as "The Name of the Rose" for example, the settings look great, the tone is grim, the mystery is fairly interesting and the acting is better than I expected. Well worth a watch!