Kings of the castle
A decade after its acclaimed first season, BBC historical drama Wolf Hall is back for part two, subtitled The Mirror & The Light. Director Peter Kosminsky explains how the show continues the story of the fateful relationship between Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII.
Could it be the longest gap between two seasons of a drama in television history? It’s certainly up there.
Wolf Hall first hit screens back in January 2015. Receiving widespread acclaim, the debut season was based on the first two books – Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – in celebrated author Hilary Mantel’s trilogy focusing on the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell in Tudor England.
Starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII, Wolf Hall recreated the period in rich detail, featuring countless historical locations and stunningly elaborate costumes and set design. It followed Cromwell’s rise from lowly blacksmith’s son to the most powerful figure in the king’s court, and culminated with the execution of the second of Henry’s six wives, Anne Boleyn (played by The Crown’s Claire Foy).
Now, just shy of a decade later, the series has returned to the BBC in the form of Wolf Hall: The Mirror & The Light, taking its name from the final novel in the late Mantel’s trilogy.
It’s a hiatus substantially longer than the four-year gap between the second and third runs of Donald Glover’s Atlanta (2018 and 2022 respectively), and even the seven years between seasons two and three of fellow BBC hit Happy Valley (2016 and 2023). In fact, reboots aside, the only major drama that could lay claim to a longer break might be Twin Peaks, which returned for a third season after a whopping 26 years off air (though many would argue that it was more of a reboot than a continuation).
On screen in Wolf Hall, however, no time has passed at all. In fact, Wolf Hall: The Mirror & The Light even picks up slightly before where the first season left off, with Anne Boleyn being led to her death.
Despite the amount of time that has passed, the key creative team involved remains unchanged. Peter Kosminsky is back as director, Peter Straughan is again the writer behind the adaptation, and Colin Callender returns as executive producer. Produced by Callender’s Playground and Company Pictures, the series launched on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday, with the remaining five episodes to follow weekly.
At first, Kosminsky had some concerns about the gap. “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: we’re all 10 years older,” he says. “The cast is 10 years older and the audience is 10 years older. Initially, I thought, ‘Hmm, this is going to be interesting.’ We’re carrying on, literally picking up from the moment the first series ends, and everyone looks a lot older – apart from Damian, who just gets younger every day.
“But then I remembered that the three novels really span the period that Cromwell serves Henry, and that is almost exactly a 10-year period. So although obviously the jump is always going to attract attention, strictly speaking, Cromwell and Henry and the other characters who are in all three books age across a 10-year span.
“So initially my concern was how to make it feel continuous. And we focused on that. This is the moment we choose to make the jump. Everyone is slightly different, and I think people who watch the series will see that Henry VIII is different – terrifyingly so. But you’ll see that as the series unfolds.”
That change in Henry is clear from the off, with the infamous king unable (or unwilling) to contain his joy over Anne Boleyn’s beheading, allowing him to make Jane Seymour (played by Miss Scarlet & the Duke star Kate Phillips) wife number three less than two weeks later.
As viewers saw in the first season, Anne Boleyn’s demise was engineered by Cromwell, cementing his rise to power. But for those who know their Tudor history, it’s no spoiler to say that Cromwell too falls fatally out of favour by the end of the period depicted in The Mirror & The Light.
Meanwhile, that 10-year gap has resulted in a few character changes beyond additional wrinkles, with several roles having to be recast. While Rylance, Lewis and Phillips are among those returning, new players include Timothy Spall (The Sixth Commandment) as the Duke of Norfolk (previously played by the late Bernard Hill), Charlie Rowe as Cromwell’s son Gregory (previously Spider-Man’s Tom Holland) and Karim Kadjar as Eustace Chapuys (replacing James Bond actor Mathieu Amalric).
It’s also notable from the first episode of The Mirror & The Light that this season features actors of colour, which was not the case with the first outing. “There are a number of speaking parts played by people of colour, and this is not something we did in the first series. I’m delighted we’ve been able to do it,” notes Kosminsky, who adds that diverse casting was also something Mantel had been keen on.
“The approach was, ‘We want the very best actors available for the show.’ We looked at
everybody and we chose the best actors who auditioned for the roles. Obviously, we aren’t playing lookalikes in the series. Damian is many things, but he doesn’t resemble Henry VIII particularly.
“I was very determined on this from the very start of this phase of the project, but I was very supported by Hilary, who also went on record as saying she was a supporter of the idea of diverse casting for Wolf Hall. It was never something that was questioned. We set out to do that in this second series, and we cast the best people.”
In terms of the themes and trajectory of the story, Kosminsky says much has changed. “The big difference, I suppose, is that the first series was about ascent. Cromwell was the new music,” the director explains. “It was a piece devolved on hutzpah; he was the man who said what no one else would say. Then when we begin this series, he is the establishment, he is the person that everyone’s going to push against. And it is a story of descent, and descent into darkness. It’s a much more interior piece.
“We had to figure out how to do what Hilary did so eloquently with narration in the book – how to access Cromwell’s inner world. And of course, television is perfectly suited for that because we have access to flashbacks.”
Storytelling devices such as flashbacks and dreams allow Jonathan Pryce to return as Cardinal Wolsey, one of the first major figures to face the consequences of losing Henry’s favour. Wolsey’s demise is presented as one of the biggest drivers behind Cromwell’s subsequent actions, spurred on in pursuit of revenge against those who helped to bring down his former master.
Prior to her death in 2022, Mantel had always been on hand to aid that storytelling process, contributing to the development of the show even before she had finished writing her trilogy. The second season was officially greenlit back in 2019.
“Hilary was sending us the novel in 100-page instalments as she was writing it, which was weird,” Kosminsky says. “She’s a double Booker Prize-winning novelist, and, OK, [Straughan] is Oscar nominated, but I felt a little bit out of my depth.
“She was asking for – no, demanding – comments. There were email exchanges that went on for years, to and fro, as we raised various questions with her. But there was always that expectation that she would be there right through the process.”
With Mantel and the creative team working closely from the off, her death was a major blow not just in terms of losing a friend, collaborator and prize-winning author, but also to the development of the TV series.
“Hilary took a very generous and unusual attitude to adaptation of her work, at least in my experience,” Kosminsky says. “Her attitude was, ‘It’s over to you now. I’m here to help in any way I can.’ And all through the first series, she was as good as her word – never critical, never territorial, just trying to help.
“And we had every expectation, of course, that that would happen again, even a richer experience, because we all knew each other pretty well by that time. And then just as we were about to get going, she completely unexpectedly died at age 70.
“Apart from being very sad to lose a friend and also really sad for all the novels she would have written had she lived, we were handicapped without her. But then we did have all those emails, and they were detailed. Some of them went on for 10, 15 pages. They were a fantastic resource.”
As if following up one of the most critically acclaimed seasons of television of all time after a whopping 10-year gap wasn’t hard enough, Kosminsky felt extra pressure in realising the final work of a literary great. But if the first episode is anything to go by, he and his fellow creatives have nothing to worry about, with Rylance and Lewis again bringing huge gravitas to their characters and the production values picking up where they left off. The entire series is filmed on location, and dark scenes are lit largely by candlelight, providing a level of immersion rarely achieved in period pieces.
“When we were making them, and I think we all felt this, it was [Mantel’s] last novel. And some people feel, and I happen to, that while she was alive, she was the greatest living writer in the English language. And we are now adapting her last novel,” Kosminsky says.
“It’s quite a responsibility. For me personally, I’ve just been obsessed with not letting her down.”
RELATED CONTENT
Tall Tudor tale
The Tudors might be an evergreen subject for historical dramas, but in the hands of My Lady Jane showrunners Gemma Burgess and Meredith Glynn, history is almost unrecognisable. They outline how they created this dramatic alt-history series that imagines a different future for Lady Jane Grey.
Hall of fame
Almost 10 years after BBC historical drama Wolf Hall first aired, its long-anticipated sequel is in production. Playground Entertainment executive producer Colin Callender explains why Wolf Hall: The Mirror & The Light will be worth the wait.
Dynamic duo
A modern take on a crime procedural that happens to be set in 1880s London? Welcome to the world of Miss Scarlet & The Duke.
tagged in: BBC, Damian Lewis, Mark Rylance, Wolf Hall, Wolf Hall: The Mirror & The Light