Shardlake: the Disneyfication of the Monasteries

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

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

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.

Article

Culture

Film & TV

Monsters

11 October 2024

5 min read

Cartoon villains: who's the real baddie?

What kind of villain do we want?

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

A cartoon chase sees a car driven by a cow escaping from a car of baddies under a giant poster of their villainous boss.

Jazz Cow vs. Dr Popp.

“Nobody thinks they’re the bad guy”. That’s a phrase I often use when helping people write situation comedies. It’s always useful to have a strong antagonist who gets in the way of our hero. But the villains tend not to consider themselves to be evil. In fact, they are offended at the suggestion.

The Batman universe has turned the interesting villain to new levels. The Penguin is Gotham’s latest production, a brand-new TV series on HBO. Colin Farrell plays a highly nuanced anti-hero, exploring The Penguin’s “awkwardness, and his strength, and his villainy, yes, his propensity for violence”. Farrell told Comicbook.com he was attracted to the role because “there's also a heartbroken man inside there you know, which just makes it really tasty.” Audiences are often invited to have sympathy for the devil. Should we be worried about the blurring of the lines between good and evil?

I’ve been asking myself this question as I’ve been writing a new animation which involves a villain called Dr Popp who is trying to take over a city. But what kind of villain do we want in 2024?

Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of The Joker back in 1989 feels like pop-culture ancient history. His Joker was an embittered agent of chaos without many redeeming qualities but mercifully lacked the nihilism of later versions. It was an old-fashioned story of cops and robbers which has its own simplistic charm. But have those days gone forever, having been shot in the head and dropped off a bridge into a river?

The problem is it is so easy to humanise evil. You just give it a human face. The arch-villains of the twentieth century – the Nazi members of the SS – are rather sweet when portrayed by comedians Mitchell and Webb. A nervous member of the SS Unit (Mitchell) waiting for an attack from the Russians looks at the skull on his cap and asks his fellow comrade-in-arms (Webb): “Hans, are we the baddies?”

Any student of World War Two will know that it’s never as simple as good versus evil. Many terrible things were done by people who felt justified in their behaviour. Moreover, ‘the goodies’ also felt compelled to do morally dubious things – like the bombing of civilians in cities – in order to defeat ‘the baddies. After all, they started it.’ The truth is always far more complicated than the war films suggest.

Dr Popp is the very worst kind of villain: he has great power and he wants to help. In his own mind, he’s completely clear about his mission.

Ten years ago, I was researching real life baddies for my sitcom Bluestone 42 about a bomb disposal team set in Afghanistan. At times, I had to think like the Taliban who, in their own minds, were entirely justified in leaving bombs by the side of the road, to be triggered by British soldiers or Afghan children. They were pretty relaxed about the outcome. It’s hard to sympathise with this way of thinking, but it made sense to them.

My internet search history from that time probably put me on some sort of Home Office watchlist. Maybe a small dossier was started on me. More recently, that dossier would have become thicker as I’ve moved sideways from sitcom into murder mysteries, having recently worked on Death in Paradise and Shakespeare and Hathaway. To work on shows like these, you need to be thinking of good reasons for good people to commit murder. Someone would need a very strong motive to commit a murder on an idyllic Caribbean island where the local detective has a 100 per cent resolution rate. You also need to research ingenuous methods for murdering people in a way that escapes detection. I’m surprised I’ve not yet had a knock on my door, or enquiries made to the neighbours to call a number if they see anything suspicious.

But what about cartoon villains where nothing is real? The bold colours and the larger-than-life characters might suggest that there is more clarity about goodies and baddies. But there isn’t. Evil villains – that is, villains who realise they are evil – are extremely rare. Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe comes to mind. This kind of demonic baddie can be entertaining with wit and charm, like Hades in the Disney movie, Hercules. This character had some brilliant one-liners and was superbly brought to life by the voice of James Woods. Overall, however, purely evil characters are hard to write.

Cartoon villains need proper motivation. This is either a character flaw or a backstory. In The Lion King, Scar is consumed with envy that his brother is king – and a good one at that. In The Incredibles, Syndrome is playing out his sense of injustice that he was not allowed to be Mr Incredible’s sidekick, Incrediboy. In The Simpsons, Mr Burns is essentially Mr Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. He’s a Scrooge-type figure who doesn’t care about love and respect. He just wants to own the town.

The cartoon villain I’ve been thinking about is for a new animation project I’ve been working on called Jazz Cow. The eponymous hero is a saxophone-playing cow and a reluctant Bogart-style leader of a bohemian band of misfits. They are trying resist the advance of the all-consuming algorithm created by Dr Popp, the villain. But what’s his motivation?

Dr Popp is the very worst kind of villain: he has great power and he wants to help. In his own mind, he’s completely clear about his mission. He’s trying to make the world better, easier, safer, cheaper, more efficient and convenient. Why would anyone want to refuse his technology, reject his software and keep away from his algorithm?

This is why Dr Popp has to silence Jazz Cow, literally, by stealing his saxophone. He simply cannot allow Jazz Cow to delight audiences at Connie Snott’s with live improvised music. There’s no need for this music! Dr Popp has all the music you could possibly need, want or imagine. Why improvise when we have artificial intelligence?

Dr Popp is a cartoon villain for today when relativism is still alive and well. ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are still concepts or points of view rather than absolutes. However, there is good and evil in Jazz Cow. But the evil doesn’t come from Doctor Popp. It comes from the user or consumer. That would be us.

‘The Algorithm’ is always learning and always trying to give us our hearts’ desire. And that’s the problem: our hearts frequently desire that which they cannot – and should not – have. Dr Popp’s algorithm is like a mirror held up to our faces. In it, we see the real baddie: ourselves. Not even Jazz Cow can save us from that. But what this horn-playing cow can do is to make the world a more humane place.

For more information about Jazz Cow, and information on how you can make the show happen, take a look at our Kickstarter – and don’t worry. Jazz Cow would approve, as it’s the creative’s way of sticking IT to the man.