Sequel trouble - the problem of Henry IV Part 2

Inspired and made curious by watching Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight I've begun reading Henry IV part 2 , which I have neither read nor seen in decades. It's clear from the start that this is a more dark and more dry play than h41  a Shakespeare perhaps trying for a reprise but the jokes and barbed fun of part one seem tired and cruel in part 2 , which of course is part of the point . There's nothing funny about Hal's disguising himself to spy on Falstaff. Similarly f's running out on his debts and taking bribes to recruit soldiers whom he know will die in battle is cruel and mean-spirited. Reading or seeing this play we wonder how Hal could have slipped back from the heroic story of part 1 - dramatically it doesn't work and we keep straining toward the famous conclusion - I know you not old man etc.  easy for the callous Hal to say btw.  Welles wisely usd some of the best material in chimes not only the king's famous soliloquy- uneasy lies the head that wears a crown - but also falstaff and shallow reminiscing about the old days (w shrewdly cuts the followup when F says that shallow is a liar). Some of the poetic language is al,Ostroff cryptic - unusual for the generally crystal verse of S - Andy some of falstaff's prose rantings may even top his audacity in part 1 a butnthenrelation between F and Hal is so strained and unbalanced here that the play feel s out of synch - we begin to despise not only F Andy his crew but the crown prince as well. Sequ