Shardlake

This new series goes a long way to doing the books justice.

The actor [Arthur Hughes], who anchors every scene he plays, has charisma to spare, and, assuming an audience arrives, this will one day be characterized as a star-making performance. .... Adapted by Stephen Butchard (“The Good Mothers”) in four relatively lean, well-packed episodes, the series includes a complement of classic procedural scenes. .... It’s no surprise to learn that the series was partially filmed in Transylvania. We are on unfamiliar familiar ground, and it feels good.

Shardlake is prone to delivering dramatic monologues, when alone in his bedroom, usually as he divests himself of the painful brace he wears to help him manage life with scoliosis. But this is to quibble with an otherwise hugely well-executed and enjoyable (I forgot to mention Peter Firth having a whale of a time as the villainous Duke of Norfolk!) addition to the Tudor drama canon.

The unravelling is well done, even delivering a little love story along the way.

More than just acting as an effective story in its own right, this season also acts as the perfect set-up of a world for additional stories, with engaging characters and an enticing historical backdrop.

Director Justin Chadwick keeps it all running at a fast clip while the Hughes/Boyle odd-couple pairing clicks. And the historical elements punch up a convoluted mystery that has surprising ties to actual events.

"Shardlake" is nuanced enough in its political profile of early 16th-century England, less so in the delivery of some overheated dialogue and the impression it seems to have that everyone spoke to each other during that period as if delivering royal decrees.

For all its masterwork in laying out a Tudor setting, and its excellent performances, the real framework of the series still manages to poke through. At its heart, Shardlake is still very much a murder mystery, a procedural wrapped in codpieces and capes.

Its surfeit of broad, melodramatic commentary grants only the illusion of depth to its characters. Shardlake gestures at their inner lives and competing political visions but barely dips past the surface of their psyches.

The idea of a classic murder mystery with an epic Tudor setting and a big budget is an exciting one. But the source material and charismatic leads deserve better execution

The premise is excellent and the set-up compelling; the trio of Shardlake, Barak and Cromwell a satisfying guide through the savagery of 16th-century England. But once the murders start and the focus turns to a community tormented by an unknown killer, the show slips into something muddier and more generic.

It’s a solid, intelligent offering that never quite kicks into a higher gear.