Tudor - Wolf Hall

“The King never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.”

— Queen Jane

      It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Hilary Mantel, *Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell)

Henry VIII's parade of six wives in a decade has been mined for drama almost since his life ended. There have been countless retellings about the King who turned an entire country and its religious practices on its ear so that he could legally divorce, remarry, and sire a male heir. 

(That he then proceeded to divorce, behead, or be outlived by four women in succession was just gravy.) From silly vaudeville songs to sexy late-night dramas to hit musicals, everyone wanted to dig into Henry's story; even Shakespeare wrote about it. 

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Codpieces! Corsets! Treacherous court politics! 

Wolf Hall is back – and the world is losing its head. As the series reaches its ruthless climax, its stars reveal to Annabel Sampson why Gen Z can’t look away in the January 2025 issue

Welcome to Wolf Hall, the world of 16th-century politics and intrigue. It is 1529, and the issue of King Henry VIII's first marriage is coming to a head. And, as the opening placard tells us, the king is not a forgiving man.

Cromwell: The rumor is the king has moved on from Mary Boleyn to her flat-chested sister.

 

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.

- Hilary Mantel

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Is Wolf Hall historically accurate?
 

 Wolf Hall

The hotly anticipated second series of the late Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall trilogy has finally hit our screens, nearly ten years after the first. The six episodes adapt the trilogy’s last book, The Mirror and the Light, and cover the years from the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, in 1536, to the climax of Thomas Cromwell’s execution in 1540.

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The cast are so incredible that even the bit parts feel like stars of the future. Peter Kosminsky’s rich, clever adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels needs to be plunged into without distraction

Where was Wolf Hall filmed?

In 2015, MASTERPIECE debuted what was soon to be a critically acclaimed series known as Wolf Hall, based on the Booker Prize winning work written by the late Hilary Mantel — and the rest, as they say, was history (just like the subject matter of the series, based on the life of King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell!). 

So what has the talented cast been up to since the series aired nearly a decade ago? Before the premiere of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, with many of the original cast reprising their roles, learn all about where you may have seen some of the award-winning actors from the series since then.

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When a woman withdraws to give birth the sun may be shining but the shutters of her room are closed so she can make her own weather. She is kept in the dark so she can dream. Her dreams drift her far away, from terra firma to a marshy tract of land, to a landing stage, to a river where a mist closes over the further bank, and earth and sky are inseparate; there she must embark towards life and death, a muffled figure in the stern directing the oars. In this vessel prayers are said that men never hear. Bargains are struck between a woman and her God. The river is tidal, and between one feather-stroke and the next, her tide may turn.

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell)

Wolf Hall, final episode, review: One of British TV’s towering achievements Mark Rylance pitches Cromwell’s brilliance and vanity to perfection as The Mirror and the Light bows out

Is Wolf Hall historically accurate? History lesson or drama?

After five long years, Wolf Hall is back on our screens with the second and final season. Following the events of Hilary Mantel's third Wolf Hall novel, The Mirror and the Light, the series traces Henry VIII (Damien Lewis) and his advisor Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) in the four years following the execution of Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy), concluding with Cromwell's death in 1540.

What many TV fans quickly notice about Wolf Hall is its apparent accuracy. Everything from the costumes to the sets to the language certainly feels as though it's true to history. My Lady Jane it is not! But although Wolf Hall bucks the trend of many modern period dramas, just how historically accurate is it really?

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 ‘The Mirror and the Light’ sees Mark Rylance adding further depth to his portrait of Thomas Cromwell

King Henry VIII oversaw a break from Papal Rome, established an independent Church of England and remarried, twice, in roughly the same span of time it took for Wolf Hall to come back.

The superlative BBC drama, set during this turbulent period of Tudor rule, last aired in early 2015; before lead actor Mark Rylance — then best known for his stage work — won an Oscar, and before another epochal split from Europe could give the series a timely resonance. Very little has changed, however, as far as the show itself is concerned. A few tweaks to the ensemble aside, it has lost none of what made it the BBC’s crown jewel a decade ago.

The second series — adapted from The Mirror and the Light, the final novel in Hilary Mantel’s historical trilogy — picks up in the immediate aftermath of the previous episode, which concluded with the execution of Anne Boleyn. Not one for sentimentality, Henry (Damian Lewis, mercurial and magnetic as the capricious king) celebrates the severing of his second wife’s head by tying the knot with Jane Seymour, whom he hopes will deliver a male heir. 

Until then, his reign seems unstable; vulnerable to challenges from his estranged eldest, Mary — a devout Catholic who refuses to recognise her father as the head of the church — and his cousin, Reginald Pole, who calls for a pro-Roman uprising against the king. Having orchestrated the demise of the out-of-favour Anne, the king’s newly appointed lord privy seal Thomas Cromwell (Rylance) is now tasked with nullifying these familial threats.

Of all the great anti-heroes who defined the Peak TV era, few were quite as complex and captivating as the blacksmith’s son-turned-king’s confidant. Admired by some for his quiet gravitas and erudition, distrusted by others for his guile and ambition, he’s described here by one of his many detractors as having “no face or truth”. Rylance’s portrayal of Cromwell continues to be reveal the depths beneath the inscrutable exterior. In the opening episodes he is both calculating and compassionate towards Mary, serves Henry with loyalty and self-interest, and confronts his complicity in the crown’s cruelty.

Rylance conveys so much in Cromwell’s reticence, yet these internal conflicts are also manifested as imagined conversations between him and his beloved former master, the late Cardinal Wolsey, played, as before, by Jonathan Pryce. Among those also returning are Lilit Lesser and Kate Phillips as the strong-willed Mary and the callow queen Jane respectively.

Rich, textured performances are complemented by Peter Kosminsky’s dynamic direction, which does away with the stuffiness often found in British period dramas, and a script that’s not only eloquent, but tinged with melancholy and laced with wit.

Here, the politics of the court, state and beyond plays out in carefully worded exchanges in candlelit rooms; it is shaped by rumours and intimation as well as rhetoric and intimidation. Such storytelling can challenge attention spans used to the churn of streaming content. Wolf Hall is decidedly not bingeable. But it is appointment weekly viewing, just as it was back in 2015.

★★★★★

On BBC1 on November 10 at 9pm. New episodes air weekly and available on iPlayer