A historical drama for a modern audience, Wolf Hall, 2016 Golden Globe winner for Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night)—a blacksmith’s son who rises from the ashes of personal disaster, and deftly picks his way through a court where ‘man is wolf to man.’ Damian Lewis (Homeland) is King Henry VIII, haunted by his brother’s premature death and obsessed with protecting the Tudor dynasty by securing his succession with a male heir to the throne. The cast also includes Claire Foy as the future queen Anne Boleyn.

Some months back, as a gift for our 79th birthdays (a month apart) our oldest son sent us the Masterpiece Theatre series on disc of Wolf Hall. We put the disc away, meaning to view it eventually. And last week we decided enough time had gone by, we really should have a look. The setting, the drama and the classical historicity it represents is of interest to us both, but in particular to my husband who like our son, is a devoted Anglophile; of its history, in any event.

We watched the first several episodes last Saturday, and yesterday evening, the intermediate episodes. They really are fascinatingly addictive. Like so many of the dramatic historical productions that the British theatre presents, this one too is a superb rendition of imagined human reactions to events known to have occurred in history.

A skilled novelist thought long and hard about her own knowledge of human nature, and obviously studied the noted personal characteristics through historical narration of the people whom she focused on in the production of her fictionalized account of a famous/infamous time in history when a petulant, entitled monarch sought to satisfy his cravings denied him by the highest order of the Catholic Church by creating a sectarian schism.

It is the interventionist and enabling machinations of a courageous and principled adviser in the personage of Thomas Cromwell -- working to help his liege lord, Henry VIII, achieve his goals, aided by the wise guidance and patience only he, not of noble birth but possessed of a nobility of vision and purpose lacking among the princely court advisers to the king -- that the performance focuses on.

Class entitlements clashing with practical human intelligence and crass social/political upsmanship represent the tension between Cromwell and the titled lords who haughtily presume to rebuke his common status as the offspring of a village blacksmith, despite his rise from obscurity to positions of authority, however tenuous in a seething cauldron of religious and political intrigue. At the height of his authority Cromwell well understood the malign jealousies and hostile reactions to his influence over the mind of a monarch whose personal characteristics and uncertainty left much to be desired, a craven but puissant man determined to have his way.



The acting is superb, the settings meticulously true to the period, giving insights into major actors' motivations and their very human frailties and obvious judgemental disabilities. This is a noble effort to entertain and to educate. A gripping and moving portrayal of the temper of a time and the character of the principals who carried events forward into history.