CLOAK & DAGGER

ARTHUR HUGHES on playing 'the Tudor Morse' in a monastic murder mystery

- IAN MACEWAN

SHARDLAKE 
NEW FROM WEDNESDAY 1 MAY, DISNEY+ DRAMA

We tend to think of the monastic life as being a spartan one, but in the grand, candlelit refectory of St Donatus monastery, the tables are groaning with platters of mouth-watering food and goblets of fine French wine. TV Times is in the Hungarian capital of Budapest to watch filming for Shardlake, a four-part murder mystery for Disney+ set against the reign of Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries and which has been billed as ‘the Tudor Inspector Morse’.

London barrister Matthew Shardlake (played by Arthur Hughes) is dispatched by chief minister Thomas Cromwell (Time’s Sean Bean) to investigate the brutal murder of his commissioner at St Donatus, so that the closure of the monastery can proceed, and its wealth pass to the Crown.

Shardlake, however, who is regularly taunted as ‘crookback’ because of his scoliosis, does not receive the warmest of welcomes and finds the case is more complex than he first thought. And with Thomas Cromwell’s underling Jack Barak (Manhunt’s Anthony Boyle) keeping an eye on him, the shrewd sleuth knows failure is not an option.

We caught up with Arthur, 32, previously seen in The Innocents and Then Barbara Met Alan and the first disabled actor to play Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company, to find out more…

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