Shardlake

Perhaps one of the best things about Shardlake is also its worst: The series is a microscopically mini one at just four episodes long. On the one hand, this makes for tight storytelling, very little bloat, and an insatiable desire to binge binge binge like mad until you get to the very end. On the other hand, however, it all feels as if it’s over far too quickly.

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.

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

"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.

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

“Shardlake” has much potential, but the monks populating the story — who function less as characters than human scenery — prove to be too stolid to function as true foils.