History on a loop
Wolf Hall’s contemporary relevance couldn’t be more clear: self-serving leaders are here to stay
BBC
- Caroline Frost
Add Wolf Hall: the Mirror and the Light to your watchlist
Ad
Regular readers of this magazine will know that there was a bit of a hoo-ha recently when our writer tried to ask Wolf Hall star Damian Lewis for his take on the relevance of Henry VIII today. The usually smiley Old Etonian turned on his heel and walked away (OK, out of a Zoom interview but still dramatic) in a style of which his Tudor alter ego would surely have been proud.
Apart from this playing all too neatly into a mapping of actor onto subject – the sangfroid, the superiority, the sulk – it does mean we were left without an answer to the question of why, in 2024, we should care about Henry and his acolytes, including Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith’s son who ended up the king’s consigliere. In the absence of Lewis’s contribution, I’ll take a stab myself.
Damian Lewis plays Henry VIII in Wolf Hall: The Mirror And the Light. Playground Entertainment/Nick Briggs
It’s tempting to see Wolf Hall as a lush medieval soap. The heaving shoulder pads and black boots with turny-uppy toes, plus the constant twang of a lute straight out of Blackadder, may set it firmly in Tudor times, but all the high language can’t disguise the base appetites on show in this timeless tale of a man transferring his affections from one woman to her sister. Something we’ve all seen before – with slightly less fatal consequences – from The Colbys to Neighbours’ Alessi twins.
Equally, you could see it as a political thriller, a jostling for power between men (most of whom happen to be called Thomas), akin to anything from State of Play to House of Cards. Squint and the first series’ various walk ’n’ talk negotiations between Thomases Cromwell and More (Mark Rylance and Anton Lesser) could easily be those of Leo McGarry and the House Leader in The West Wing, with the White House rose garden swapped for an ornate maze.
We can only guess at the repercussions of the US election
Aaron Sorkin’s aspirational West Wing borrowed from real-life politics that now seem from a galaxy far away. Right now, there is a more analogous figure whom Hilary Mantel couldn’t have predicted when she penned her trilogy.
The first series of Wolf Hall appeared in 2015, when Donald Trump was first descending his golden escalator to run for leader of the western world. Season two is now upon us and… well, so is season two. Meanwhile, on screen, Lewis’s Henry bristles with caprice and carnality, his readiness to twist the truth, his tinkering with the levers of office and his eye on the prize..
This would seem to be pantomime-villain stuff except for the power and the consequences. In 2024, we can only guess at the repercussions of the recent US election – talk of “Project 2025”, Supreme Court nominations, tariffs and a change in world order might seem fantastical, until we watch Wolf Hall, where Mantel lays out in forensic detail how Anne Boleyn’s refusal to bed the king before he put a ring on it led to his dissolution of the monasteries and the country’s biggest social chasm of the last thousand years.
Donald Trump. Getty
Mantel reminds us, though, to focus not just on the preening peacock who drives the narrative. It is Cromwell’s delicate machinations – performing his high-wire act between ambition and conscience until he topples – where the real drama lies, posing the question: what would I do in that situation? There will be people grappling with that thought right now in Washington, and elsewhere.
Ad
The philosopher Georg Hegel said, “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” Thanks to Mantel and everyone who has brought her work to the screen, we can’t say we have not been told. Wolf Hall may be superb drama taking us into a different era, class and preoccupations, but, make no mistake, it also asks us questions of the here and now.
Authors
Caroline Frost
Ad
Ad
Subscribe for £1 per week
Too much to watch this autumn? Let Radio Times magazine and app do the choosing, with expert picks across TV, streaming and film.
Loading...
Ad
Loading...