Wolfhall: The Mirror and the Light (Wreckage), BBC 1, BBC iPlayer, screenplay by Peter Straughan, director Peter Kosminsky, based on Hillary Mantel’s novels of the same name.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0024z1n/wolf-hall-the-mirror-and-the-light-1-wreckage

Reading is what I do. Strange as it seems, I couldn’t get into Hilary Mantel’s trilogies about the Tudor dynasty. No surprise there. I’m no royalist. Henry VIII is distant to me as the current monarch, King Charles. I can’t bear to watch programmes such as Downton Abbey, which I refer to as ‘the parasites’.

Yet, I binge-watched all six episodes of Wolf Hall during lockdown. And would binge-watch six more if they were on BBC iPlayer. I’m rationed to one a week.

Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), son of a Putney blacksmith, is the beating heart of the series. Henry VIII’s (Damian Lewis) fixer. He refers to himself ‘a butcher’s dog’. In a squabble with the aristocratic Lady Margaret Pole (Harriet Walter) he reminds her, ‘And I’m on your scent’.  

His mentor, Archbishop Cranmer (Will Keen) was dead, murdered by the acolytes of Henry because they thought that’s what the King wanted. They overreached themselves and were punished for it, because that is not what the King wanted, or seemed to want. It seems only Cromwell could read him.

 Yet, Crammer is alive in spirit. ‘What are you writing?’ he asks Cromwell as he scratches some thoughts on paper.

Cromwell can be honest with the dead, in a way he can never been with the living. ‘Notes,’ he says, of how to approach the King.

They have a modern relevance in the court of the moron’s moron, Trump.

‘Never say, “No”.’

Make him think that all ideas are his along and they turned out just as he intended. He alone takes the credit and the limelight.

The break with Rome is complete. All the monetary power and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church now flows to the monarch as God and Henry intended. Her inability to bear a male heir to the crown marred his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (Claire Foy). Conveniently, Cromwell found evidence of her treachery. She could not keep her mouth or her legs shut. She had, it seems, incestuous sex with her half-brother.

‘Why does she look up at the tower?’ Cromwell is asked at her beheading.

‘Because she expects clemency.’   

The King’s vengeance follows his whimsy and the Calais swordsman’s blade follows.  

Cromwell scratches down on his list of things to do and not to do when approaching Henry. ‘Do not turn your back on him, literally or metaphorically,’  

King Henry VIII is on a high in the opening episode. The consummation of his marriage to Lady Jane Seymour has taken place. He gushes over her purity (subtext, not like that big-mouthed slut Catherine of Aragon). If Lady Jane shuts up and pulls out a male heir—she’ll be fine.

The King has rewarded Cromwell for his services. He’s been made Lord Privy Seal. His seat at the head of the Lords that attend the King. A remarkable journey for a commoner. He is the power behind the throne. Everything goes through his desk before it reaches the King. Cromwell is at the peak of his powers.

His king has given him another impossible task. The King’s daughter Mary has refused to refute allegiance to the Church of Rome and pledge allegiance to the Protestant King. This is treacherous and a beheading offence. Those at court believe, because she is the King’s blood, he will not murder her. Lord Edward Seymour (Will Tudor) is foolish or brave enough to say so to the King. ‘She is your daughter’.

 Ironically, the King has murdered Seymour’s daughter for less. Cromwell manhandles him away.  

Mary’s intransigence is based on a different kind of loyalty—to her murdered mother and not her father, the King. She will not sign the oath, even if she is martyred for her beliefs.

Cromwell is told that if she is beheaded, the Pope will demand other continental Kings, his subjects, bring Henry to justice and invade England.

Never say ‘No’ to the King. Make his daughter say ‘Yes’.

Conflict of the head and the heart. His own conscience?

‘Wreckage’, this episode is called. Break things and move. And for good reason. We know how it ends for the Tudors. For Cromwell.   

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