13 Oct 2013 04:06:32
The actor Mark Rylance is to be reunited with the director of the television drama about the death of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly for an "intensely political" £7m BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning Wolf Hall novels.
Peter Kosminsky, the award-winning director of a string of docu-dramas based on contemporary events – including Channel 4's The Government Inspector, which starred Rylance as Kelly – may at first glance appear an unlikely choice for a historical costume piece. It will be his first period drama – and first book adaptation.
However, Kosminsky shares with Mantel a reputation for indepth research – the Wolf Hall author spent five years investigating the 16th-century historical background to her narrative on the grim political machinations of Henry VIII's court.
Rylance will play the main protagonist, the Tudor king's adviser Thomas Cromwell, in the six-part adaptation of Wolf Hall for BBC2, which is expected to be broadcast in 2015. The BBC will also broadcast the sequel Bring Up the Bodies and producer Company Pictures has an option on the as-yet-unpublished final book of Mantel's Tudor trilogy, The Mirror and the Light.
Wolf Hall follows Cromwell's career as he ascends from a lowly start as a blacksmith's son to becoming an indispensable ally of Cardinal Wolsey, succeeding him as Henry's VIII's chief adviser after Wolsey's downfall.
Kosminsky said: "This is a first for me. But it is an intensely political piece. It is about the politics of despotism, and how you function around an absolute ruler. I have a sense that Hilary Mantel wanted that immediacy."
The pairing of Kosminsky with Peter Straughan, the playwright who has adapted Mantel's work, suggests the BBC is looking for a darker and grittier take on British history than "bonkbuster" The Tudors or the corporation's own recent Wars of the Roses drama The White Queen, also made by Company Pictures, which received a critical drubbing.
Kosminsky admitted that he had not watched either series but said: "We may be dealing with the same period, but it will be a very different piece of work. Our job is to distinguish this, focus on the pedigree."
He added: "When I saw Peter Straughan's script, only a first draft, I couldn't believe what I was reading. It was the best draft I had ever seen. He had managed to distil 1,000 pages of the novels into six hours, using prose so sensitively. He's a theatre writer by trade."
Mantel called Straughan's scripts a "miracle of elegant compression and I believe with such a strong team the original material can only be enhanced".
Kosminsky is renowned for meaty, contemporary and quasi-documentary dramas, which he has often written himself, including Warriors, about the ethical dilemmas facing British soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, and The Project, which followed Labour activists from youthful idealism to the harsher political realities of government after Tony Blair's 1997 election victory.
Straughan is noted for his dark and witty theatre work, including Bones and Noir, and co-wrote the recent film adaptation of John Le Carré spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He also adapted Jon Ronson's Men Who Stare at Goats.
Kosminsky said he relished the prospect of working on a second big production with Rylance, who is sparing in his television work. "He's a total dream for a film director. I have been looking for an opportunity to work with him again, he generates a stillness and intensity; he almost mesmerises you," he said. "You have the greatest British writer working today paired with possibly the finest actor of his generation. We are aiming to be the very best."
The drama features 102 characters and Kosminsky is just starting to cast the other leading parts. It will be shot largely on location in Bruges, in medieval buildings appropriate to the period, starting next April, rather than studio sets.
Rylance, a former artistic director of the Globe Theatre, arrived in New York this month for the first Globe transfer to Broadway, the all-male productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night.
