On the contentious eighth episode of a new podcast, co-hosts Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, and Christian Lorentzen review Hamnet, the new film by Chloe Zhao, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name. Topics discussed include lead actors Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley; one co-host’s fondness for the movie, especially its first half; the two other co-hosts’ utter loathing of the film; the use of Shakespeare; screaming; trees; womblike hollows; open weeping in movie theaters; twins; communication of the bubonic plague; maternal powers of resuscitation; kitsch; Shakespeare in Love; Joseph Fiennes; the late Sir Tom Stoppard; shot composition; Romeo and Juliet; historical fiction and historical accuracy; triteness; trauma; Normal People; male bulk and its sex appeal or lack thereof; whether Shakespeare had an eight-pack; Orpheus and Eurydice; child actors; head size; Stephen Greenblatt’s 2004 article “Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet” in the New York Review of Books; James Shapiro’s 2025 article “The Long History of the Hamnet Myth” in the Atlantic; sword fighting; Steven Spielberg; the Hallmark Channel; parents busy with their careers when their children die; adultery vs. child death as autofictional theatrical inspiration; the Sonnets of Shakespeare; the conjugation of Latin verbs; apples; calyxes; and much more. Thank you for listening. 

Correction: At one point a co-host states that Maggie O’Farrell’s novel won the National Book Critics’ Circle Prize for fiction in 2021; it was merely a finalist. We regret the error.