Mark Rylance gives a stunning, nuanced performance in Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light

There have been more than 60 monarchs of England and Britain over the past 1,200 years or so, but the one people seem to really care about—at least based on viewing habits and the sheer amount of works about him—is Henry VIII: the glutton, the tyrant, the wife killer. In Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light, though, the bloodthirsty king’s story is overshadowed once again by that of his principal councillor, Thomas Cromwell. And it makes for six stunning hours of television.

A decade ago, critics and audiences alike fell hard for the Machiavellian masterpiece that was Wolf Hall. It carefully brought the first two tomes in Hilary Mantel’s award-winning trilogy to life in sumptuous detail, with the psychological and political thriller ending with the public execution of Claire Foy’s Anne Boleyn. Despite dropping so many years later, this second—and final—season (which aired on BBC One at the end of 2024) picks up immediately where things left off. Indeed, the late queen’s blood is still being sluiced from the block as her dangerously fickle husband (played by Damian Lewis) utters his wedding vows for the third time to Kate Phillips’ Jane Seymour.

These scenes of Henry are fleeting, of course, for it is Cromwell (portrayed once again by Mark Rylance) who commands attention and drives the story forward. Now Master Secretary and Lord Privy Seal, he has been richly rewarded for delivering Anne to the Calais swordsman’s blade and thus paving the way for Henry’s third marriage. But all of this power comes at a cost. 

For starters, he’s constantly being watched by a whole host of influential enemies, including Anne’s uncle, Thomas Howard (Timothy Spall), and the genuinely chilling Plantagenet heiress Margaret Pole (Succession’s Harriet Walter). A wedge has also been driven between Cromwell and his once-loyal ward Rafe Sadler (the eternally youthful Thomas Brodie-Sangster), who can’t help but question the bloody solution to the king’s second marriage. In fact, Cromwell has very few allies on the Privy Council but plenty of rivals, all of whom would love to see him fall so that they might rise up in his place. And, of course, he has his own warped moral compass to contend with, which drives him to “protect” Princess Mary (Lilit Lesser) as he forces her to break with the Catholic church. It compels him, too, to track down the illegitimate daughter of his late mentor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), to look overseas when hunting down a fourth wife for the king, and to push forward with his own controversial agenda for religious reform.