Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light
Nov. 19th, 2024 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessEpisode 1: Wreckage
I don’t know how much the commissioners and schedulers thought about the timing of airing this, but it is about being the right-hand man of a king who’s gone down in history as a tyrant.
I started watching it, and soon regretted not rewatching Wolf Hall (I haven’t read the books and it's been almost 10 years), because I was confused about all the Earls and their loyalties. I don’t even remember if Cromwell had been seeing the Cardinal’s ghost then. Strong opening, cutting from Anne Boleyn’s execution to Henry’s marriage to his latest wife. And given that the title has ‘light’ in it, the use of daylight, especially in the court scenes, was tremendous.
I feel a little too ignorant for this show, and it didn’t help that I probably started watching the episode too late in the night for me, because I was battling sleepiness for the last ten minutes, perhaps more.
So, as Henry hoped his new wife would get him a male heir (never not going to look down at men like him and think ‘the XY gene comes from you, you prat’), the focus was on getting his daughter Mary on side, while she, her supporters and the Catholics were hoping, somehow, Henry would restore her to the succession and end this independent church* nonsense and come back to bend the knee to the Pope. (Er, guys, no. I know enough Tudor history and about human nature and the exercise of power to say that definitively.) Henry gave Thomas Cromwell the job of persuading ‘Lady’ Mary to bend the knee to him, which he did his own way and for his own reasons as well as obeying the King. But all around him were vested interests, people in court who did not like his continual rise, as a blacksmith’s son from Putney. Also, as the Cardinal’s ghost/his subconscious kept reminding him, he had to ‘ware the king too.
I was particularly struck by the moment Mary pulled off her headcovering (the last time we’d seen such an act had been Anne’s ladies in waiting doing so just before she was beheaded) and we saw her bright red curls, reminding us that she was her father’s daughter. It was only in retrospect that I clocked that Cromwell asking for another glass to be set at the table was in preparation for Princess Mary, now that she was freed from house arrest and returned to court and her father’s affections. There was an awkward moment when Queen Jane pointed out that she was only seven years older than her stepdaughter…
It is very good, prestige TV, even when there’s pathetic fallacy, which Cromwell is totally manipulating in conversation with a diplomat. The music, the costumes, the locations were all perfect. Rylance is remarkable as Cromwell, Lewis is charismatic as Henry. Pryce returns, you have people like Harriet Walter and Timothy Spall in small roles! Although young Mary was touching, there is a Claire Foy-as-Anne Boleyn hole of feminine firepower, but that’s the story. Someone should cast Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Dorian Grey.
*The Beeb can’t have known the CoE would be in the news right now for not doing enough to stop child abuse. Well, not to the extent that it is.
I don’t know how much the commissioners and schedulers thought about the timing of airing this, but it is about being the right-hand man of a king who’s gone down in history as a tyrant.
I started watching it, and soon regretted not rewatching Wolf Hall (I haven’t read the books and it's been almost 10 years), because I was confused about all the Earls and their loyalties. I don’t even remember if Cromwell had been seeing the Cardinal’s ghost then. Strong opening, cutting from Anne Boleyn’s execution to Henry’s marriage to his latest wife. And given that the title has ‘light’ in it, the use of daylight, especially in the court scenes, was tremendous.
I feel a little too ignorant for this show, and it didn’t help that I probably started watching the episode too late in the night for me, because I was battling sleepiness for the last ten minutes, perhaps more.
So, as Henry hoped his new wife would get him a male heir (never not going to look down at men like him and think ‘the XY gene comes from you, you prat’), the focus was on getting his daughter Mary on side, while she, her supporters and the Catholics were hoping, somehow, Henry would restore her to the succession and end this independent church* nonsense and come back to bend the knee to the Pope. (Er, guys, no. I know enough Tudor history and about human nature and the exercise of power to say that definitively.) Henry gave Thomas Cromwell the job of persuading ‘Lady’ Mary to bend the knee to him, which he did his own way and for his own reasons as well as obeying the King. But all around him were vested interests, people in court who did not like his continual rise, as a blacksmith’s son from Putney. Also, as the Cardinal’s ghost/his subconscious kept reminding him, he had to ‘ware the king too.
I was particularly struck by the moment Mary pulled off her headcovering (the last time we’d seen such an act had been Anne’s ladies in waiting doing so just before she was beheaded) and we saw her bright red curls, reminding us that she was her father’s daughter. It was only in retrospect that I clocked that Cromwell asking for another glass to be set at the table was in preparation for Princess Mary, now that she was freed from house arrest and returned to court and her father’s affections. There was an awkward moment when Queen Jane pointed out that she was only seven years older than her stepdaughter…
It is very good, prestige TV, even when there’s pathetic fallacy, which Cromwell is totally manipulating in conversation with a diplomat. The music, the costumes, the locations were all perfect. Rylance is remarkable as Cromwell, Lewis is charismatic as Henry. Pryce returns, you have people like Harriet Walter and Timothy Spall in small roles! Although young Mary was touching, there is a Claire Foy-as-Anne Boleyn hole of feminine firepower, but that’s the story. Someone should cast Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Dorian Grey.
*The Beeb can’t have known the CoE would be in the news right now for not doing enough to stop child abuse. Well, not to the extent that it is.
