\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light\u201d picks up where \u201cWolf Hall\u201d left off, amid the gruesome beheading of Anne Boleyn in 1536, which we get to see this time in even more gruesome detail.<\/p>\n
In real life, however, there has been an unusually long gap between series and sequel. It has been 10 years since the release of \u201cWolf Hall,\u201d based on the first two novels in Hilary Mantel<\/a>\u2019s Thomas Cromwell series. This means that in \u201cThe Mirror and the Light,\u201d<\/a> based on the final novel<\/a>, the actor Mark Rylance is a decade older than the 50-something character he is playing.<\/p>\n And it works, because the Cromwell in the new six-episode series (beginning Sunday on PBS\u2019s \u201cMasterpiece\u201d) is haunted and beaten down by his work as Henry VIII\u2019s political and matrimonial fixer, a job that included fabricating the evidence that led to Boleyn\u2019s murder. In that first scene both we and Cromwell are reliving the beheading (necessary, from Henry\u2019s point of view, because Anne, his second wife, had not borne a son).<\/p>\n \u201cThe Mirror and the Light\u201d is very much of a piece with the earlier \u201cWolf Hall,\u201d<\/a> written and directed by the same men \u2014 Peter Straughan and Peter Kosminsky<\/a> \u2014 and with many actors returning to their roles, including Rylance and, as Henry, Damian Lewis. Among relatively recent historical costume dramas, the shows set a standard for polish and seriousness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But as the story of the commoner Cromwell\u2019s decline and abrupt fall, \u201cThe Mirror and the Light\u201d has an entirely different feel than the up-by-the-boot-straps, grimly celebratory \u201cWolf Hall.\u201d The mood is nervous and ominous, as Cromwell begins to make errors and give in to his emotions. And it habitually casts its eye back in time, as Cromwell reassesses the often dirty work he has done. Picking up on a device from the novel, \u201cThe Mirror and the Light\u201d continually drops in snippets of Cromwell\u2019s guilty memories in the form of bits of film we have already seen across the two series.<\/p>\n His guilt even has a supporting role in the form of the dead Cardinal Wolsey, the beloved master and mentor whose downfall Cromwell was unable to prevent. Cromwell now has late-night conversations with Wolsey\u2019s slightly diaphanous ghost, scenes that are a little cringey but that do us the favor of keeping Jonathan Pryce and his archly disapproving eyebrows in the show.<\/p>\n As worthy as \u201cThe Mirror and the Light\u201d is, the uncomfortable truth is that this retrospective, rueful gaze \u2014 the first and last shots of Rylance are of Cromwell looking backward \u2014 gets a little tedious across six episodes. It doesn\u2019t help that the events covered, including Henry\u2019s third through fifth marriages, do not have the juicy, morbid force that the deaths of Boleyn and Thomas More gave the first series.<\/p>\n One thing Straughan does to compensate is to chart Cromwell\u2019s moods through his interactions with a series of women: Boleyn\u2019s successor as queen, Jane Seymour (Kate Phillips), who dies needlessly after childbirth; Wolsey\u2019s daughter, Dorothea (Hannah Khalique-Brown), who blames Cromwell for her father\u2019s death; Henry\u2019s daughter Mary (an excellent Lilit Lesser), who becomes a pawn in the machinations of Cromwell\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n These plot elements, given equal play with the court politics and battles over religion that actually determined Cromwell\u2019s fate, are a way to soften the character \u2014 to suggest a compassion and rectitude under the brutal realpolitik (traits that the historical record does not necessarily support). They also supply a melodramatic, emotional charge \u2014 especially in Rylance\u2019s scenes with Lesser \u2014 that the entirely male scenes around council tables and in whispered meetings lack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Cromwell\u2019s enemies marshal against him, Straughan and Kosminsky have trouble animating the court intrigue in any very interesting way \u2014 it plays as a shouty, monotonous version of fraternity life in which hazing results in beheading, if you\u2019re lucky, or having your intestines pulled out of your body, if you\u2019re not. The fine actors Timothy Spall and Alex Jennings, as Cromwell\u2019s two main antagonists, are not able to overcome the generic nature of these scenes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Mirror and the Light\u201d kicks into another gear, however, whenever Lewis is onscreen as the narcissistic yet knowing and perceptive Henry. Lewis\u2019s contained, preternaturally magnetic performance is as sure an embodiment as you could imagine of the force of a powerful monarch.<\/p>\n It has an effect on the show that is both historically authentic and dramatically problematic: When Lewis is offscreen, we, like Cromwell and the other courtiers, are anxiously waiting to see what he will do next. The prodigious Rylance is fine, but Cromwell\u2019s role in \u201cThe Mirror and the Light\u201d involves a preponderance of rueful staring into space. Henry may be the secondary character, but as the title says, he\u2019s the show\u2019s light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n