The Mirror and the Light, the new series of Wolf Hall, picks up right where the first series finished in 2015, with a twist. We see Anne Boleyn. The most famous thing that was ever done to her is about to happen. Now, unlike in the first series, we see a companion piece: King Henry VIII marrying his new bride Jane Seymour. It’s an artful way to bring us back up to speed, but make it new. The viscerally shocking Anne scene is made even more grubby. From this high starting point, the series powers on.
The 16th century world of the Tudors is conjured beautifully — and brightly. After complaints that the first season was dark and hard to follow (one might think the blame lay with the Tudors for failing to develop electric lighting, but there you go) the first episode of this series is, by contrast, Wolf Hall meets Blackpool Illuminations.
This lets the little details — the glinting rubies in a headdress, the whites of a character’s eyes as they flare in a hushed, tense discussion — shine through. You have a sense of what it might be like to live in that world of stark light and deep shadows. It’s also a world of strong characters, bound up in complex etiquette.
Timothy Spall plays a wonderful Norfolk, a sort of slowmotion canonball, glaring and bulldozing his way through the episode. Damian Lewis, as King Henry, has mastered the art of looking royally into the middle distance and playing the worst boss in the world. His voice has a distinctive rasp, an enjoyable (if that is the right word) echo of Donald Trump’s. Lilit Lesser’s conjuring of the vulnerable, headstrong Princess Mary is first-rate and captures the simulatneous strength and weakness of the real Mary’s position. Kate Phillips as Jane Seymour is suitably weird and stiff.
As for Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell, you really wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. His Cromwell has a baleful glare, an acid tongue, and no qualms about laying hands on his social superiors. Rylance’s co-stars must have been thanking their lucky stars he’s not a method actor. Rylance is utterly magnetic throughout. The remarkable thing is that his brilliant performance is only one among many.
It’s glorious stuff, not a romp (you’re thinking Jilly Cooper, not Hilary Mantel) but a tour de force. Rylance embodies this best, especially the force part. Cromwell gets some enjoyable lines, muttering at one point “I think I’ve lost the blacksmith’s art, but I can still swing a hammer”. Lady Margaret Pole fumes at him “you are a snake Cromwell,” he counters: “No, madam, a dog — and on your scent”.
The hard part about Mantel’s book, and this show, is that having given us a character in Cromwell who is so rich, interesting and exciting, we dread to see him fall. But, well, there’s no getting around that brutal historical fact. So when Cromwell, at one point, shows a hint of vulnerability, it’s doubly painful and full of foreboding. But as this taut show artfully demonstrated in its first moments: you can know exactly what’s coming, but still be shocked when it does. That’s what you call a reason to keep watching.
Streaming on BBC One and iPlayer from November 10
