Hamnet is a 2025 British/American historical-fiction film, directed by Chloé Zhao, who co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O’Farrell, based on O’Farrell’s novel of the same name. It had its world premiere in August at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival, which is in Colorado, apparently, and was released in the UK yesterday, 9 January.

I feel I must stress that describing Hamnet as historical-fiction might be considered misleading; there are so few genuine facts involved that ‘fictional-history’ would seem nearer the mark. Lovers of the book, and I believe there were a lot of lovers of the book, will no doubt like the film, but will say, ‘it wasn’t as good as the book’ – don’t they always? I did not read the book, so came to this story cold. Unfortunately, I also left it pretty cold, too.

My biggest problem is that since so little is known about Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), her backstory has simply been made up. Her name has been changed to Agnes, and she has been made into some kind of weird nature-obsessed witch (with a pet falcon), which seems improbable in the extreme. To say I did not like the characterisation is an understatement – I found it positively irritating. Then we have Will Shakespeare himself (Paul Mescal) whose characterisation constantly reminded me of Connell from Normal People (also played by Mescal) rather than any realistic depiction of what England’s greatest ever playwright and poet might have been like.

I even found Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), title character and son of the above, to be a moody and irritating little bugger, although to be fair this might have been transference of the opinion I had already formed of the parents. The only believable portrayal was of Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother (Emily Watson) – when she told Will not to marry Agnes, since she was a witch, in my opinion he should have listened to her.

Interestingly, the children were born without umbilical cords, although why that should have annoyed me given the total absence of any kind of realism, I am not sure, but it did. On to the final twenty minutes, and we had the opening performance of Hamlet, performed in a style which did not feel at all Elizabethan to me; but now I am just nit-picking. My boat was not floated; in fact, I suspect my boat may have been the Mary Rose.

If you liked Hamnet the book, go see the film – you might like it, you clearly don’t mind the balance of fiction and history, but you will probably conclude it is not as good as the book; if you didn’t like the book, then definitely don’t bother; if you didn’t read the book, think carefully – if you like your ‘history’ to be invented, then who knows, you might not find it as irritating as I did.