Tudor intrigue and some Trump-inspired bluster
Wolf Hall
Available from Thursday, 6 episodes OK so you know in your heart you should have already read Hilary’s Mantel’s sprawling meister werks; both of the books that this series is based on — Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies — won the Booker prize for Mantel, after all. You must get around to it. But fret not. In the meantime, dinner-party-bluffing help is at hand in the form of this atmospheric six-part drama which won a slew of Baftas at this year’s awards. It re-tells the foundational tale of Cromwell, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. There is a measured pace and a priority on the performances. As Henry’s right-hand man Cromwell, Mark Rylance gives a sphinx-like performance which will live in the memory. It was filmed by candlelight, which brilliantly captures the moonlit atmosphere of intrigue and backstabbing. This migrant from the BBC is one of the few dramas that is actually as riveting as the source material.
Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal
Available now A recent New Yorker cartoon had a woman bursting in on a cartoonist as he draws. “Stop,” she says. “That Trump cartoon you came up with this morning just happened.” In a sense the same might be said of this movie. We have Johnny Depp in a latex mask, hamming it up as only he can, brilliantly capturing the didactic melodramas of the 1980s, in a script that hammers the avarice of that decade and the man who seemed to embody it. It’s funny in parts, it’s scary (the hair is very scary), and it’s well-made. But the truth is that already, it is completely out of date. The stuff that they’re trying to satirise was long ago outrun by the man himself. In the time between them making this movie and its release on Netflix, Donald Trump has accelerated consistently and across all fronts. No one could possibly keep up.
Oranges and Sunshine
Available now A moving drama tells the story of emotionally scarred adults who were illegally deported as children to Australia from Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. Co-produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films company and scripted by Rona Munro, who wrote Ladybird, Ladybird, it’s a film that has all the believable grime and integrity of a Ken Loach movie, but in fact it’s directed by his son, Jim. Emily Watson plays a social worker who reunites estranged families. The film takes its title from the things the children were promised — what they received, in many cases, was years of hard labour in detention centres or sexual abuse in religious schools. Watson’s performance is amazing and the subject matter means this film will strike a chord with Irish viewers.
Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery
Available now There did seem to be a danger for a while that Russell Brand might become what we once heard Stephen Fry described as: A stupid person’s idea of a clever person. Brand’s self-conscious verbosity and eagerness to wedge his latest half-understood sociology into any interview did start to grate. But there can be no doubt that one subject he is genuinely brilliant on is addiction: His Question Time takedowns of the awful Peter Hitchens, his illuminating Guardian essays on the subject, as well as his own autobiographies, are all testament to that. There’s also the life experience he brings. Cannabis, booze, acid, speed, coke, crack, heroin... Russell took all of them. At one point he was told that if he continued, in six month time he would be dead, in prison, or in an asylum. He got clean at the age of 27, the age Amy Winehouse was when she died. She was a friend and he wonders if he could have done more to save her. This well made documentary blows apart some of the myths around addiction and looks at the options open to people who fall prey to it. He challenges conventional theory and embroiders some illuminating interviews into his own intelligent, if sometimes tiresomely wordy, editorialsing.