It seems pleasingly apropos that it is almost impossible to believe that the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall appeared on our screens almost a decade ago. Whether you were reading her masterpiece or watching its fruits, carefully peeled and arranged for our delectation by screenwriter Peter Straughan and director Peter Kosminsky, the years between us and the Tudors shrank to nothingness. Time no longer.
The 2015 series covered the first two books in the trilogy – Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – taking the story of Thomas Cromwell, Putney blacksmith’s boy and adviser to Henry VIII, through the negotiation of the end of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, his break with Rome, the crowning of Anne Boleyn and finally – though you ludicrously kept hoping otherwise – her execution, contrived to clear the way for Jane Seymour and the greater possibility of a male heir. Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light covers the last volume and final four years of Cromwell’s life. And it does so as beautifully, movingly and immaculately as before. It is breathtaking.
