Article
Culture
Film & TV
4 min read

Shardlake: the Disneyfication of the Monasteries

What works, and doesn’t, translating from page to screen.

James is a writer of sit coms for BBC TV and Radio.

Two men in Tudor clothing converse in a street
Shardlake, left, played by Arthur Hughes.

Have you ever had that sense of dread on discovering your favourite novel is going to be a movie or a TV series? Fans of CJ Sansom’s books have been divided on the adaptation of their favourite historical novels about a hunchbacked lawyer during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Some have been delighted by what they’ve seen, and felt the four episodes of Shardlake on Disney+ were true to the original books. Others were appalled. 

The originals books are greatly loved. On The Rest is Entertainment podcast, Richard Osman read out comments from his own mother about how and why she loved CJ Sansom’s book so much. I was not so captivated. I read the first book, Dissolution, some years ago and liked it. But I didn’t like it enough to read more. 

So when the TV adaptation landed on Disney+ I was curious. My own reaction was relief that CJ Sansom had passed away only days before his first novel arrived in our living rooms. Sansom was committed to historical accuracy and authenticity. The TV Series? Not so much. 

But Shardlake is entertainment for the masses, not the bookish. Why shouldn’t sixteenth century monks have incredible teeth? Why shouldn’t they burn candles by the dozen in every room of the monastery, day and night, despite the fact that candles were eye-wateringly expensive back then? And yes, these monks should be going to church at least nine times a day, and spend hours in prayer and private study. But who really wants to watch that? This isn’t Wolf Hall on BBC2. This is mainstream global streaming TV: the Disneyfication of the Monasteries.

Given the differences in the media, why are both versions of Shardlake so successful? The secret sauce is the hunchback himself, Shardlake. 

As a screenwriter myself, I know all too well that the dynamics of twenty-first century television – aka ‘content’ – and novels are very different. (My failed novels have reinforced this lesson for me). Shardlake has to appeal to an international audience who have not read, and will never read, CJ Sansom’s books. They won’t even listen to Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook talk about the Dissolution of the Monasteries on The Rest is History podcast. 

Novels are fairly cheap to print. TV is expensive, burning money faster than the monks of St Donatus can burn candles. Shardlake is international TV, financed internationally and filmed internationally. Consequently, you are not looking at the Kent countryside. You are looking at Hungary, Austria and Romania for a mixture of reasons. Mostly these would be tax breaks, cheaper crews and financial incentives. 

St Donatus’s monastery is a mash up of the medieval Kreuzenstein Castle near Vienna and the gothic Hunedoara Castle in Transylvania. It looks brilliant. It just does not in any way resemble a medieval monastery – which were surprisingly uniform through Europe. The chapel at the monastery is comically small, whereas there would, in real life, be a hilariously large abbey. 

The New Stateman said, “This is not Merrye Englande. It is the Grand Anywhere we’ve come to know all too well in the age of streaming, and it bores me to death, my eyes unable to stick to it,” which seems a little over dramatic. Most of the reviewers were unconcerned by this lack of historical accuracy. The Guardian called it ‘magnificent’, others ambivalent. It scored about 80% on Rotten Tomatoes with both the critics and the audience. Overall, Shardlake has been a hit. 

Given the differences in the media, why are both versions of Shardlake so successful? The secret sauce is the hunchback himself, Shardlake. He is the sleuth, trying to solve the murder of a fellow commissioner in the service of the King’s ruthless right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell. The recipe for the Shardlake sauce is made up of two key ingredients. 

Shardlake bears his cross with fortitude, not bitterness. 

The first is his goodness. It seems like a bland attribute, but it’s rather refreshing, especially in a world divided both then and now. Shardlake is not complex character with inner demons. (At least that’s not how he’s presented in the first book or this adaptation.) When I read the book, my abiding memory is that Shardlake was one of the good guys. This was surprising at the time as normally Protestants were seen Philistines and cultural vandals who cynically changed their theology to strip the church of its wealth, before passing the churches on to their descendants who smashed the statues, whitewashed the walls and, eventually, cancelled Christmas. Shardlake may be in the service of Thomas Cromwell, but he knows in his heart of hearts that Anne Bolyen was innocent of the crimes for which she was beheaded. And in some small way, he makes amends for this. 

But Shardlake’s goodness is only half of the recipe. The other half is his hunched back. In the sixteenth century, this makes him an object of ridicule and shame. It is not flipped around to become a strength. It is an affliction with which he has to cope. Given Shardlake’s world steeped in religion, we are reminded of the ministry of Jesus, who attracted the sick, the crippled, the lepers and the blind. They were, of course, healed and Shardlake is not so fortunate. 

Shardlake bears his cross with fortitude, not bitterness. Likewise, Jesus Christ himself bore his cross as a victim of injustice on trumped up charges, beaten and executed as one cursed alongside criminals, saying ‘Father forgive’. Shardlake, like Christ in the gospels, is a suffering servant. And now Disney may see the Gospel According to Shardlake spreading all over the world.

Snippet
AI
Culture
Digital
Sustainability
3 min read

AI Barbie: does anyone think about destruction?

We choose waste and consumption over stewardship.

Jean is a consultant working with financial services and Christian organisations. She also writes and broadcasts.

An AI generated image of a Barbie-like Toy
AIn a Barbie world.

If you spend any time on any social media platform you would have probably seen the ChatGPT Barbie trend. Resembling packaged toys, the AI depicts you like a doll or action figure. At first, I thought I was only seeing it because of the LinkedIn algorithm. But then I started to see articles in my feed from mainstream media outlets teaching people how to do it.  

Generally, speaking, I am not a trend follower. I am one of those annoying people who doesn’t get involved with what everyone is doing just because everyone is doing it. Thankfully, I don’t suffer from FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out) and I don’t think I am swayed much by peer pressure. But I like to stay informed about what is going on. So I can have something to talk about when I meet people in new settings and to remain relevant. So, when this started popping up in my feeds, I investigated it, and I was pleasantly surprised. 

I am not anti-AI. I have embraced and seen the benefits of AI in my own life (this sounds a bit weird, but I think you get my point). I understand and accept that it will, can and has improved productivity and creativity. I use ChatGPT all the time for social media content and captions, brainstorming, titles for articles, coding problems, research and language translations.  

But like many, I have long been sceptical about the growth of AI use and the viability of its long-term sustainability. I wouldn’t describe myself as a climate warrior, but I do believe that we have a responsibility to ourselves and the generations after us to use the finite resources of the planet frugally. The AI-powered Barbie trend throws that out of the window.  

The current Trump administration has facilitated a shift away from ESG (environmental, social and governance) targets in the world of business. For the most part, the criticism of this in the media (social and mainstream) has been focused on DEI targets. But perhaps, in the face of slow economic growth and because this began before the Trump administration took office, the move away from environmental targets or what I would call environmental stewardship, or frugality has received limited coverage.   

I have never understood why proponents of the climate emergency, have made themselves bedfellows and in some cases, wholehearted supporters of the AI revolution. A typical data centre uses between 11-19 million litres per day water just to cool its servers, that’s the equivalent of a small town of 30,000-50,000 people. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts by 2030 that there will be a doubling of electricity demand from data centres globally equating to slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan. This growth will be driven by the use of AI in the US, China, and Europe. That’s why vocal support of the climate emergency and advocating escalated transition to AI, as is the position of the UK government, currently seems paradoxical to me.  

This isn’t hyperbole, Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI recently tweeted asking folks to reduce their use of the ChatGPT’s image generator because Open AI’s servers were overheating.  

That is why I have been pleasantly surprised, by some of coverage on the Barbie trend. Arguments are now being made more loudly about the true cost of unlimited AI expansion.  

I am not against progress or AI expansion entirely, and I have some support for the argument that governments have pursued net zero policies at a rate that is impractical, expensive and unviable for the average consumer in Western democracies. However, the Barbie trend reveals our tendency to choose waste and consumption for fleeting pleasure. For many of us, we have probably just thought, ‘It’s just a bit of harmless fun’. But the truth is it isn’t, it’s just that we can’t see the damage we are doing to the environment. That’s without going into the financial and privacy costs associated with the AI revolution. It really is a case of that age old adage, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’.  

The challenge is now that we know, what do we do? Do we continue to be part of wasteful AI trends? Or do we use AI to add value, increase productivity and solve problems?  

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