One of the producers of the BBC’s new period drama Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light has given his damning thoughts on Hulu’s recent hit Rivals.
Wolf Hall follows the life of Thomas Cromwell during the reign of King Henry VIII, while the Jilly Cooper adaptation Rivals (produced for Hulu and released in the UK on Disney+) follows a feud between two wealthy men in 1986.
Colin Callender, who worked as an executive producer on Wolf Hall, took aim at Rivals during an appearance at a Broadcasting Press Guild event in London.
“The fact that something is successful is not necessarily the sole criteria by which I would judge whether it’s something I would want to make or not,” he said, as first reported by The Times.
He went on to detail the reasons why Rivals is not a show he would choose to produce.
“What are the things that I look for in a show? Is there a big idea that underpins it, that makes it relevant and interesting to a contemporary audience? Does it have something to say?
“Are the emotions expressed and the situations dramatised truthful? Are they entertaining? Or do they trade in clichés? All the sorts of questions I would ask of a show are such that [Rivals] is not a show I would make.”
He was then asked what he thought the reasons were for Rivals’ popularity and acclaim.
“I’m not sure anything is surprising anymore,” he said. “I don’t dismiss [looking away from troubling events] as an ambition.”
The Mirror and the Light is a follow-up to the BBC’s 2015 series Wolf Hall, and the second part of an adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s award-winning book trilogy of the same name.
In a four-star review of the new series, The Independent’s Nick Hilton wrote: “Mantel’s books are a staggering literary achievement; no popular historical novels have achieved the interiority that she managed with Cromwell. This series attempts to mimic that through a non-linear timeline that is constantly suggestive, if not revealing.
“Without the benefit of Mantel’s prose or access to the fragmented Cromwell psyche, it is as much as the show can do to elevate itself beyond The Tudors, The White Queen, or The Spanish Princess. And even if the eventual product is inferior to its source, the story is still riveting and the telling still mature and dynamic.”
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light begins on BBC One at 9pm tonight (10 November).