TV Critics: Wolf Hall; Up The Women; The Secret Horse; Pets: Wild At Heart

“For those not blessed enough to have caught Mark Rylance on stage this was a rare(ish) chance to catch one of Britain’s finest actors on the screen. Despite the heavy lifting required by the script, Rylance is already imperious, his Cromwell a broody viper of a man.”
Will Dean, The Independent

“This is such a festival of thesps — Bernard Hill, Richard Dillane, Mark Gatiss, Claire Foy — who can resist playing spot-the-actor? It is also, despite, perhaps, one time-shift too many, an exemplary work of clarity by the screenwriter Peter Straughan, who has reduced 1,100 pages to six hours. Yet what is remarkable is that although the actors and the story are so celebrated, this account, directed by Peter Kosminsky, feels as real and visceral as if the wolves of Henry’s court were panting down our own necks.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“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. 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.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Mark Rylance is hypnotic, understated but totally screen-owning. There are fine performances wherever you look – Jonathan Pryce as Wolsey, Claire Foy’s Anne Boleyn, a whole host of other big names playing to the event. Which this is, event television, sumptuous, intelligent and serious, meticulous in the detail, but not humourless or po-faced.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“My guess, and I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here, is that future episodes might contain events that are more conventionally thrilling. Nonetheless, as a means of setting the scene, drawing us deep into the Tudor world and presenting us with a winningly ambiguous central character, it’s hard to see how this one could have been done much better.”
James Walton, The Telegraph

“It’s a lavishly-furnished spectacle. Throw in the odd bit of torture and I expect Wolf Hall will haul in the crowds.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“This drama won’t have enormous audience figures. But it fully communicates the nerve-jangling sense of bodily threat with which Mantel’s novels are freighted - life is cheap in a disease-ridden Tudor England ruled by an absolute monarch - and it offers us the chance to bring that fascinating, dangerous world into our living rooms. Pay attention: this is TV worth watching.”
Serena Davies, The Telegraph

“Despite having a fine cast, some good gags (I liked Vicki Pepperdine’s Gwen’s continuing references to “hungry striking”) and several degrees of enjoyable slapstick, Up the Women lacks the element that can elevate a sitcom from decent to great. That is a sense of doom.”
Will Dean, The Independent

“The only possible exoneration of Up the Women is to record that it is funny. Once we get to know the characters (those who saw the show when it was shown on BBC Four two years ago already have) genuine hilarity may be as inevitable as votes for women.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“The dialogue was peppered with frequent little joys of unforeseen silliness and just the sound of women using long words without apology was exciting, never mind the commissioning of a sitcom written by and starring some of the funniest females in the country. Long may it continue.”
Julia Raeside, The Guardian

“The adventure became increasingly ridiculous, from a visit to a shaman, to a recently crashed lorry leaking petrol by the side of the road, to the gradual revelations about Engstrom’s incredible life. She was a country song waiting to be written. Only Engstrom cared whether she found these horses and retrieved a DNA sample to prove her theory, but thanks to Woodman’s careful pacing of the story, I who have no feelings about horses, wanted and needed her to succeed.”
Julia Raeside, The Guardian

“The Secret Horse: the Quest for the True Appaloosa presented us with a wonderful, real story of one woman’s mission. She was proved right but it hardly mattered, so charming and thrilling was the journey.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“A new world record was set last night, for the amount of ridiculously cute animal footage squeezed into a single TV show. Innovative camera techniques revealed fascinating facts about our pets and the traits they’ve inherited from their wild ancestors. But what we really wanted to see were adorable pets, and the show worked best when it explained just why small animals are so cute.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It’s not quite Planet Earth, but if watching a hamster fly off a wheel in slow motion is your idea of a good evening in (mine certainly is) then who’s complaining?”
Will Dean, The Independent