A Wolf Hall in Sheep Hall's Clothing

Ever since a fateful Scholastic Book Club purchase in elementary school, England’s Tudor dynasty (1485-1601) has been one of my top five obsessions. So naturally I have thoughts on the BBC series Wolf Hall, based on the late Hilary Mantel’s book trilogy about Not That Cromwell, An Earlier Cromwell, which finally wrapped up after a ten-year gap between Season 1 (2015) and Season 2 (2025).

I loved Book 1, liked Book 2, was meh on Book 3, and liked the series—though the gushing over Mantel by all involved did leave me wondering “Is she really a once-in-a-generation genius, or is she just dead?” A question you could also ask about Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540).

Anyone watching this show in the first place knows the gist going in: guy becomes instrumental to noted tyrant Henry VIII; this backfires; guy’s decapitated. But if you’ve skipped or gotten rusty on the books, you’ll still encounter plenty of surprises along Cromwell’s road to perdition. Even if you know objectively too much about Henry’s court for a layperson and see every historically-rooted plot development coming a mile away (raises hand sheepishly), there’s much to enjoy and ponder. My personal pros and cons:

PROS

• performances—chef’s kisses all around, even/especially for actors playing underdeveloped characters

• costumes—gorgeous and period-accurate; what a concept!

• sets—ditto

• court intrigue!

• fidelity to deeply researched source material

CONS

• lil too much fidelity to source material

• stylistic flourishes at the expense of character development

• Season 1’s period-accurate “lighting”—great for the tallow candle business, suboptimal for anyone trying to view a TV show

• premise that’s questionable AF

Mantel’s books bend over backwards to make Cromwell sympathetic. The show, coasting on Mark Rylance’s magnetism, barely even has to try. This is, of course, fiction! But it’s very important to remember that. IRL Cromwell was a smart, affable guy whose biggest achievement was expanding the powers of a vengeful ruler in ways designed to get people killed. Imagine if, five hundred years from now, John Boehner got Yassified and depicted as a tragic hero of compelling complexity. That’s basically what the Mantelverse does with Cromwell. So this story, for all its meticulous accuracies, only feels convincing and moving to me if I view it strictly as fantasy.

Our fantasy Cromwell is a regular-degular merchant-slash-lawyer in 1520s London: family man, friend to animals, dabbler in religious reform. His life gets high-stakes when he starts working for Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s pal and fixer. Cromwell becomes Wolsey’s ultra-competent right-hand man; Wolsey becomes Cromwell’s substitute dad. But Wolsey fails to pull off a major fix—convincing the Pope to annul Henry’s marriage to Katharine of Aragon so Henry can marry Anne Boleyn and sire XY-chromosome-havers to lock down the line of succession.

Wolsey falls from Henry’s favor and dies of irrelevance. Cromwell copes with his grief by diving in front of Henry like Hi. I also do fixes. Put me in, Coach.

With Cromwell’s help, Henry deletes the Pope from his contacts and marries Anne. Cromwell arranges a government takeover of religious houses, confiscating riches the corrupt clergy have hoarded. Aka: payday. Buddy’s moving on up.

He also oversees some judicial murder, starting with the execution of his frenemy Thomas More (for the treason of side-eying Henry’s new role as England’s Churchboss). Mantel’s More is so insufferable, and so Not Jeremy Northam,* that I was was like “Eh, whatever.” But the appointments with the chopping block don’t stop there. Turns out killing people in a mockery of due process is a tricky cat to put back in the bag, and Cromwell’s the one herding the cats and holding the bag. By the end of Season 1, his résumé of collateral damage includes Anne (for the treason of allegedly cheating on Henry) and five Boleyn Bros (for the treason of allegedly cucking Henry).** By Season 2, I lost track of the death toll (for various bespoke flavors of treason).

Real Cromwell was a banality-of-evil type who readily annihilated anybody on Henry’s bad side. Our Cromwell picks targets who deserve to die because they—checks notes—made fun of Wolsey one time. He tortures zero people, whereas Real Cromwell could’ve put Jack Bauer to shame. The Mantelverse even implies there’s some truth to the adultery charges Cromwell concocts against Anne. I’m no AB stan (#TeamKatharine), but that’s rank nonsense. Of course, keeping Cromwell likable kinda requires making Anne unlikable—which Mantel does with gusto.

Honestly, though, Rylance’s Cromwell could throw somebody off London Bridge and I’d still root for him. Whatever he does, he looks like he wants to give you a hug. And everything he says is an endearing blend of confidence and self-deprecation, savviness and bluntness, bone-dry delivery and underlying warmth. Often, he’s just plain funny.

• When Henry says his long-dead brother visited him in a dream: “How did he look?”

• Regarding the stash of a saint’s alleged nail parings: “Man must’ve had five hundred fingers.”

• Holding and ventriloquizing a kitten: “I am a giant. My name is Marlinspike. Rawr.”

As both the everyman and the smartest guy in the room, he contrasts pretty dang favorably with his foils: smug, slimy More; the stab-first-think-never Duke of Norfolk; grandiosely un-self-aware Henry.

Furthermore, he’s Sad(TM). His beloved wife and daughters die in the very first episode! The show forgets about this by Season 2 but I suspect Rylance’s Cromwell never does. Luckily he still has a massive entourage of relations, foster kids, and admin assistants:

• Richard, loyal nephew (great-grandfather of That Cromwell, insert yikes emoji)

• Gregory, hapless son, played by Tom Holland in Season 1 and a cheaper actor in Season 2

• Ralph/Rafe Sadler, loyal ward

• Thomas Wriothesley, non-loyal underling, whose injunction of “call me Risley” (gotta love British phonics) earns him the nonsensical nickname “Call-Me”

• Richard Rich, ANOTHER non-loyal underling who serves exactly the same narrative purpose as Call-Me

• Christophe, completely unexplained fictional ward in Season 2, who’s at least played by an actor of color*** so we can tell him apart from the others

Sidenote: Season 2 almost didn’t get made for budget reasons. Director Peter Kosminsky presumably saved money by not lighting every scene with 4 billion candles—which he insisted on doing in Season 1 so the audience could have the period-accurate experience of not being able to freaking see anything. But he could’ve saved more money by cutting the number of narratively superfluous white guys in half. I know the major players of this era better than I know my friends’ kids, and even I demanded “Who TF is this?!” multiple times.

These guys tend to blend together. It’s hard to get a sense of what each one means to Cromwell individually. Gregory’s longest scene revolves around him asking his dad not to steal his girl. One minute, Call-Me’s just kinda there; next, he’s pouting because Cromwell doesn’t pick him to run an errand; NEXT, he’s going full Brutus. Rich is… completely redundant. My kingdom for a composite character with a role large enough to carry emotional weight.

But this might be less of a cast size issue than a time management issue. After all, we see Wolsey dying in flashbacks far more than we see him interact with Cromwell in life, or even post-death as a friendly ghost. And we see way too much of Henry; his screentime alone could’ve been repurposed to round out ten other relationship arcs.

Sidenote / hot take: Henry’s inherently boring. Gasp, his ego is both fragile and destructive? GASP, his emotional connections are warped by his power? Wow. Tell the NYT about this immediately. Damian Lewis is great at capturing how dangerous and deluded this creep is, but I’d prefer more coverage of characters we’re supposed to care about. (“Maybe we’re supposed to care about Henr—” No. Shut up.)

The story’s numerous fascinating women also get short shrift—even Anne, who’s heavily featured in Season 1 but whom Mantel presents with a “Look at this b*tch” framing that even Claire Foy’s layered performance can’t overcome.

A staggering number of non-Anne women are romantically/sexually/matrimonially interested in Cromwell. It’s the one thing these characters with starkly different personalities, agendas, and religious beliefs have in common, besides being too young for him even by the standards of The Past. Solidly into his sixth decade, he’s ducking and weaving around twentysomethings like he’s on an obstacle course—while also lowkey reciprocating in several cases. An incomplete list of his prospects:

• Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister (mostly trolling tbf)

• Jane Seymour, who becomes Henry’s Wife #3 when the son-having agenda doesn’t pan out with Anne

• Elizabeth Seymour, Jane’s sister (gotta catch ‘em all!)

• Princess Mary, Henry and Katharine’s daughter (!!!wtf!!!)

All criminally underused! “More Jane Seymour” is an unprecedented piece of Tudor-media-related feedback; she’s the wallflower of the crew. But Kate Phillips’s version of her had me riveted. In her blink-and-you-miss-’em Season 1 appearances, it’s almost clear what’s drawing Cromwell to her—unassuming strength, gentleness that’s not insipid. Alas, we only get a few glimpses of her before she’s on the fast-track to childbed fever (insert Oregon Trail womp-de-womp death notice) in Season 2.

Sidenote: The Seymour family owns the titular Wolf Hall. I know you were wondering about that title and if there were gonna be any wolves. Sorry, the wolves are only metaphorical.

We get even less time with Jane’s delightful sister Bess, the luminous Maisie Richardson-Sellers, who marries Gregory after a farcical misunderstanding about which Cromwell she’s getting. It’s at least easy to see what Cromwell likes about her—certainly easier than decoding his dynamic with Lilit Lesser’s intriguingly volatile, vulnerable, Very Catholic, VERY YOUNG Princess Mary.

To sell these entanglements, the show simply sets Rylance in front of me and says, “You get it.” Listen, I arguably get it too much. In Season 2, Cromwell has a ten-second exchange with an abbess played by period drama icon Amanda Root. She’s like You’ll have to pry this very profitable abbey out of my cold dead hands; he’s like Chill, I’m not here to f— up your bag, I just came to visit my surrogate dad’s illegitimate daughter, as one does. They both have so much charisma that I was chanting “KISS! KISS!” at the screen.

Instead of pursuing this age-appropriate chemistry, Cromwell focuses on yet another twentysomething: Wolsey’s daughter, to whom he spontaneously proposes within a minute of meeting her. He seems to be suggesting a mere formality for her legal protection until he tosses out the line “I would like to have more children.” Dorothea, to her credit, is like Ew. (Though she clarifies that she’s not repulsed by him physically; she just thinks he betrayed her dad and has an ugly soul. For an aging political operative that’s basically a compliment sandwich.) Hannah Khalique-Brown is dynamite; shame that her character only exists to stoke Cromwell’s fear that he failed Wolsey.

I get it: everything's filtered through the lens of “what aspect of this matters to Cromwell.” But even by that standard I have quibbles. When Cromwell’s own illegitimate daughter, Jenneke, shows up for half an episode, he’s hyped to have another living kid but barely asks her a single question. Is she rich or did she have to scrimp and save for this trip to England? What’s her religious affiliation? Does she like to read? Does she return to Antwerp because she misses it, or because she can tell England’s a sh*tshow, or because she feels out of place as a rare fictional character in this story? Surely Cromwell would want to know some of what I want to know! Kosminsky could’ve easily replaced two of the episode’s extended close-ups with a proper conversation!

I wish the show had delved more into fatherhood—exploring not only Cromwell’s relationships with his bio kids but his tendency to protect and nurture other young people, contrasting with Henry’s quest for a hypothetical son at the expense of everyone who’s actually close to him. Barring that, I would’ve settled for less insistence on making Cromwell an ~~~Enigma.~~~

The books are interested exclusively in Cromwell’s perspective but love to be coy about what that perspective is. The point, I guess, is that we’re inside the head of a dude who keeps secrets even from himself. So the show, afraid to fill in too many blanks, relies on endless closeups of Rylance’s pensive Looks.

I would happily watch Rylance peruse the phone book, but this inscrutability only gets us so far, especially when Cromwell starts going off the rails in Season 2. We’re left asking, “Buddy, why aren’t you shanking Norfolk while you have a chance? Why are you visiting Princess Mary alone in her chambers at night while she’s ahistorically wearing nothing but a robe? Why are you declining Jenneke’s invitation to flee to Antwerp with her? Buddy, WHAT are you THINKING?”

What’s he even getting out of this? Does he enjoy the money and power? Does he genuinely think he’s doing some good? Is he really just here to exact revenge against a random subset of Wolsey’s enemies—despite leaving Henry unscathed? Does he care about Henry as a person? (Gross, but the flashbacks to Wolsey expressing love for Henry seem to imply that Cromwell feels similarly?? Does not compute.) What keeps him plugging away at Henry’s to-do list despite guilt, burnout, and an isolation so intense that even Wolsey’s ghost ghosts him?

The clearest clue is his fondness for a confiscated beekeeping abbey (ikr?!?) where he hopes to eventually retire. Can’t seize artisanal abbeys without severing a few heads. Gotta keep clocking in until you’re allowed to cash out. (Me, scribbling notes like a detective: Honey = worth it???)

In lieu of a deeper understanding of our protagonist, we get many, many minutes of him…

• walking into rooms

• staring into the middle distance

• having flashback dreams

Season 2 LOVES its flashbacks. Someone should tell Kosminsky about the “previously on” feature. I stopped counting Wolsey’s deaths after four. There’s even a replay of Gregory going, Dad, please don’t sleep with my wife; it’s already embarrassing enough that you have so much game. That’s not the kind of exchange viewers forget, Peter! Yet there’s not a single Season 2 flashback of, or even reference to, Cromwell’s dead daughters and wife, whom you might expect him to be thinking about as he faces his own demise.

Because, yeah—after orchestrating the downfall of numerous enemies and quasi-friends for Henry’s convenience; after coaching others to appease Henry’s increasingly unhinged whims and head-canons; after selling his soul for a fur coat so symbolically heavy he can barely move around—Cromwell, too, gets it in the neck.

The charge? You guessed it: treason! Specifically the treason of not getting Henry an annulment fast enough! (Wife #4 for those keeping track.) Full circle, baby!

Post-arrest and pre-slice-and-dice, Cromwell says goodbye to Rafe (Thomas Brodie-Sangster, eternally baby-faced) and gets one last visit from Wolsey’s forgiving ghost (Jonathan Pryce, eternally grandpa-faced). The threads of fatherhood and sonhood come together so strongly here that I lamented, through tears, “Why wasn’t there more of THIS and less of Henry?!”

Cromwell’s interrogation is also gold. His enemies, along with interchangeable fair-weather allies Call-Me and Rich, gather crumbs that’ve been dropped over the course of both seasons—little things he’s said, done, neglected to do—and weaponize them through willful misinterpretations. The ultimate fix is in. Cromwell reacts, relatably, with annoyance: Is my downfall really gonna be this f—ing stupid?

He predicts the court will be toast without him around to manage everything. And Norfolk, of all people—who, if alive today, would be texting fire emojis to Signal chats about military strikes—sets him straight. Reminds Cromwell he’s replaceable, disposable, like everybody Cromwell himself has replaced and disposed of. ROASTED.

We’re spared the business end of Cromwell’s dismemberment. The final sequence shows him in his happy place, Beekeeping Abbey. On the verge of walking inside—where previously, he’s imagined seeing Jenneke, and where now I’d like to think he’s hoping to find his dead daughters and wife (plus some top-notch honey)—he stops, turns back, and Looks.

That troubled expression fully wrecked me, I’ll admit. I assume he’s contemplating his misdeeds and/or unfinished business—everything that’ll deny his soul a peaceful rest—but it’s open to interpretation. Here, at least, I can get onboard with the ambiguity.

In any case, we’re sad because he’s Mark Rylance, our soulful TV dad/daddy. We’ve been tricked, but it’s an effective trick. And isn’t that what the Tudor era’s all about?

Before you get too sad, though, think of today’s power players and remember the Reaper’s coming for them too.

Plot, pacing, and structure: 3. Needed fewer flashbacks and more conversations with women.

Characters: 3. Rylance makes Cromwell someone you never get tired of watching, which is fortunate because you don’t see the other interesting characters nearly enough.

Historical accuracy: 4. I deduct a point for my reservations about the entire project of redeeming Thomas Cromwell. But Mantel certainly did her research, and the show’s in lockstep with her work. I personally would’ve endorsed less accuracy if it meant, say, eliminating Richard Rich to make room for additional Jane content.

Themes: 3. The Mantelverse asks, “What if people who commit atrocities are actually well-meaning, conflicted lil guys who’re just too capable for their own good?” (Answer: They’re not!!!) This isn’t the punch-the-N*zis energy we’re looking for. But there are solid messages too: power corrupts; enabling abuse protects nobody; honeybees rock; memento mori, buddy.

*Stay tuned/subscribed for eventual coverage of Showtime’s The Tudors.

**I’m simplifying but not by much!

***There was, of course, some racist grumbling over the color-blind casting of minor characters and extras in Season 2. There’s a legitimate conversation to be had about whether casting token BIPOC in a story about white people is a Band-Aid over larger issues of which stories are getting told, but that’s not why racists are mad. They’re mad for racist reasons. Which tempts me to say: F— it, cast BIPOC as everyone, from Habsburgs to Vikings. If all it accomplishes is infuriating some pinheaded losers whenever they watch BBC or Masterpiece, that’d be enough.