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Warning: this Wolf Hall review contains spoilers.
Peter Straughan and Peter Kosminsky’s exquisite, careful adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy is finally back after almost a decade after it first aired. For anybody who still has the stomach for despotic rulers and political skulduggery this week, that’s cause for celebration. This wise drama deserved to be completed, and a performance as quietly commanding as Mark Rylance’s deserves our full attention.
You’ll need to give Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light your full attention, although effort has been made in this first episode to explain the whos, whats and wherefores. It’s easier to follow than the first series thanks to the absence so far of timeline-jumping flashbacks. It’s also easier to see, perhaps in response to criticism of the 2015 series’ atmospherically gloomy, candlelit look. Apart from the scenes inside Cromwell’s home, almost everything happens in bright daylight. If that continues as a lighting scheme, then it’s a neat way to divide Cromwell’s requirement to be one person in private, and another in public.
Inside Cromwell’s chamber is the only element that may trip an unsure viewer up in the form of Jonathan Pryce’s Cardinal Wolsey. Several years dead by the series’ 1536 timeline, this Wolsey is a phantom of Cromwell’s imagination. His conversations with his former mentor are Cromwell talking to himself, and a precious insight into what’s going on behind the sorrowful yet alert expression Rylance hides behind at court. With Wolsey, Cromwell can be bold, honest and wry – a man in his own right. With Henry, he must be nothing more than an extension of the king’s power.
We see as much in the scene where Cromwell bodily removes Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton from the Privy Council chamber for speaking his mind and telling “Harry” where he’s going wrong in the matter of his daughter Mary. A good attack dog, Cromwell uses his physicality to enforce Henry’s will. He also throws his weight around in dealings with Catholic plotters the Poles, taking Sir Geoffrey Pole by the shoulders to quite literally put him in his place when he attempts to stand in his way. However much Cromwell’s wits are now his weapon, the former soldier who carries a knife up his sleeve is never far away. As he warns French ambassador Chapuys, this blacksmith’s son may have lost the art of metalwork, but he can still swing a hammer.
With Princess Mary (Lilit Lesser), Cromwell hides the brute and instead shows her the loving father-figure and royal servant. Reading between his lines, she signs the oath of obedience Henry requires of her, and once again, “Crumb” delivers what Henry demands and is rewarded.
With each step of his ascendency though, comes the threat that lowborn Cromwell is rising dangerously high, and that’s thanks to Damian Lewis’ gently terrifying performance as Henry VIII. Lewis imbues the king with vicious menace and in this episode, does most of it behind a smile. His unctuous post-wedding night boast in Cromwell’s ear about Jane Seymour’s “freshness” and maidenly modesty may have been nauseating, but not more so than how Cromwell subsumes himself to his king, measuring his every word and look. When Mary complains, “I thought they would all say plain what I know they believe,” about the nobles on whose support she’d relied for her restoration to the line of succession after Anne Boleyn’s death, she’s showing her naivety. In the court of Henry VIII, saying plain what you believe is no way to survive.
Survival – both Mary’s and his own – preoccupies Thomas Cromwell in this first episode. As Henry VII’s leading adviser, he has his head in the mouth of a lion and is astute enough to know that one clumsy move will be the end of him.
Succession, eat your heart out: no drama better illustrates the precariousness of being in the employ of a tyrant than Wolf Hall. Its historical setting raises the stakes to the skies – take a wrong step in the court of Henry VIII and you won’t just lose your livelihood and reputation, but also your head. That’s why Mary feels frustrated. Her father’s courtiers may well believe in her divine right to succeed him on the throne, but they’re damned if they’re going to say so out loud.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light continues next Sunday at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer. It’s due to air on PBS Masterpiece in the US in 2025.
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