Ignore the politics – Wolf Hall is a Tudor drama that beheads expectations

The course of English history is often mapped out against its Kings and Queens. The Normans, bringing European modernity to a savage isle; the Plantagenets, turning the nation into an international superpower; the Victorians, industrialising our country into a formidable, globe-spanning empire. It is an easy taxonomy, but one that elides the fact that eras are shaped as much by the power behind the throne as by the royals themselves. That’s where Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the second and final chapter in the BBC’s adaptation of the late Hilary Mantel’s historical novels, comes in.

Anne Boleyn is dead. After an affair – then marriage – that changed the country, Henry VIII (Damian Lewis) is now wed to Jane Seymour (Kate Phillips) and feverishly anticipating the birth of a male heir. Slinking about behind the king, working as a fixer for the personal, political and religious matters of the day, is Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), Henry’s “dog”. From his origins as a blacksmith’s son in Putney, Cromwell is now Lord Privy Seal – one of England’s richest men and most eligible bachelors. But his power – once staked to Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), now heavily invested in both Jane and the King’s fraught relationship with Princess Mary (Lilit Lesser) – is a precious commodity. So hard to gain, so easy to lose.

This follow-up to 2015’s acclaimed adaptation of the first two novels in Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy rounds out the saga. While most viewers will know that events will culminate with Cromwell’s head on the chopping block, this is no simple, undulating, rise-and-fall narrative. Instead, the rise seems perpetual, the fall precipitous. Both Mantel and Peter Straughan, who adapts the novels, capture the capricious nature of the Tudor court and the mortal value of favour. “When fortune turns against you,” warns Wolsey, from beyond the grave, “you will feel the lash.” Ignore the temptation to find modern political resonances within this narrative – this is about the fickleness of the human condition. Much as a dearth will eventually lead to a glut, so too must the wheel move back again, and famine follow feast. And Cromwell’s finale is approaching.

“There are no endings,” he cautions, “only beginnings.” And with The Mirror and the Light picking up almost a decade after the acclaimed first volume (released before Mantel rounded out the trilogy) there is some reorientation necessary. The cast has shifted (Tom Holland is off Spidermanning now, while Timothy Spall stands in for the late Bernard Hill) and most returning characters have aged dramatically, even if Thomas Brodie-Sangster still appears to be getting younger. The internecine politics of the 16th-century court might be as murky as the lighting, but things quickly resolve around one central question: can Cromwell hold on? Enemies and advocates alike have fallen: Wolsey is gone, Anne Boleyn is gone, Thomas More is gone. Rylance, who is one of the great actors of the facial mask, gives nothing and everything away in a single look. His Cromwell is a man who knows the precariousness of his station, who sees his mistakes and triumphs for what they are. “I’m a good dog,” he declares. “If you set me to guard something, I’ll do it.” Yet it is the loyalty that made him that will undo him.

Mantel’s books are a staggering literary achievement; no popular historical novels have achieved the interiority that she managed with Cromwell. This series attempts to mimic that through a non-linear timeline that is constantly suggestive, if not revealing. Why is Cromwell drawn to specific memories at specific times? Why is his mentor, Wolsey, appearing now to remind him of his own downfall? For a man who has always operated in the shadows, he is now living in the gloom of foreshadowing. Without the benefit of Mantel’s prose or access to the fragmented Cromwell psyche, it is as much as the show can do to elevate itself beyond The Tudors, The White Queen, or The Spanish Princess. And even if the eventual product is inferior to its source, the story is still riveting and the telling still mature and dynamic.

“You feel the axe’s edge,” Princess Mary tells Lord Cromwell, in the meeting that will eventually undo him. Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light is built on that premise. Rylance’s central performance grounds the show – keeps it from floating off into the existential troposphere – but the charge remains. This is a story about history, as conducted by long-dead mortals, and about how the urgency of the present fossilises into the immutable past. All that – and it’s also a bloody fun story about trying not to get your head chopped off.