Shardlake, Disney+, review: Disneyfication of Wolf Hall rival is still solid, intelligent drama
If you come to Shardlake cold, you may at first think you’re getting a less wordy Wolf Hall. We’re in Tudor England. Thomas Cromwell is here, played by Sean Bean, the biggest name in the cast. Men whisper in candlelit rooms. Anne Boleyn is a talking point.
But what we actually have is a detective drama, based on the popular crime novels by CJ Sansom. Lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his sidekick Jack Barak are the Morse and Lewis of the times. Here they are tasked by Cromwell with investigating the murder of the king’s emissary at St Donatus, a remote monastery. This isn’t exactly a crusade for justice on Cromwell’s part – proving that the crime was carried out by someone within will give him reason enough to close down the monastery, in accordance with Henry VIII’s wishes.
Shardlake is a “crookback” in the story and played here by Arthur Hughes, an actor with radial dysplasia. It’s far from token casting: Hughes is a good actor who imbues Shardlake with a sense of fairness and decency without making him too much of a goody-two-shoes. Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) has a more dynamic role as Barak, ordered by Cromwell to accompany Shardlake on his mission. Barak’s cocksure manner covers insecurities about his lowly birth. A weakness of the script is that Shardlake shares his own self-doubts with the audience by talking to himself out loud when he’s alone in a room.
The drama had a lengthy journey to the screen – Sansom’s stories were first optioned by the BBC, only to be dropped when the broadcaster picked up Wolf Hall. The Disney deal means a generous budget and a filmic quality, but also a slight Disneyfication – vistas and locations that look as if they were created by CGI in a fairytale land. At least it avoids the current vogue for period dramas to be arch and populated by characters who speak as if they’re making content for TikTok.
It’s a solid, intelligent offering that never quite kicks into a higher gear. Disney has billed it as “thrilling”, which it isn’t. Bean makes a brief appearance and gives Cromwell a Sheffield twang. The political backdrop adds an interesting extra layer to the plot, though, and I’d be happy to see the Hughes-Boyle double act continue.
Shardlake is on Disney+ from Wednesday 1 May
