Photograph: Nick Briggs/BBC/Playground Entertainment
It has been nine years since the first blockbuster run of Wolf Hall shot complete unknown “Mark Rylance” to critical and commercial acclaim, and a smarter TV columnist who pays more attention to geopolitics would draw out a doomed attempt at a metaphor here. One about how the world has so drastically changed since 2015 – all those prime ministers and monarchs and presidents, and also Brexit and Bake Off going to Channel 4 – and I’d nod at the returning treacle-moving drama of court intrigue and everyone caring slightly too much about blood and go: “See? It’s like that, isn’t it. It’s all sort of like that.” That’s the kind of thing writers who get tie-in TV podcasts say in their opening paragraphs, and I would quite like one of those.
Sadly, I think Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (Sunday 10 November, 9pm, BBC One) might be cleverer than that. A moment for the cast, which – because they all fit so perfectly and believably into this rich world – it’s oddly easy to take for granted, but I mean, come on: Damian Lewis as Henry VIII on a delirious quest for a son before the gout really sets in; Kate Phillips as the doomed Jane Seymour, always staring nervously at her stomach and navigating the etiquette of royal court about as elegantly as I might get a big table through a small doorway; Jonathan Pryce’s Cardinal Wolsey creaks into rooms with that wry Prycean smile, always knowing more than you do by two or three magnitudes; Timothy Spall’s Duke of Norfolk does the same thing but in reverse, stumbling round marble columns and looking as confused as a dog does when you pretend to throw a stick but don’t actually throw it.
