After a nine-year hiatus, Wolf Hall returned to our screens this week with a second series based on the late Hilary Mantel’s trilogy of historical novels, The Mirror and the Light. Nearly a decade may have passed off-screen, but on-screen it’s smooth sailing.

The year is 1536 and England, we are told, “is in turmoil.” Previously seen scenes of the brutal execution of Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy) are interspersed with new images of Henry VIII (Damien Lewis), his expression hard and unforgiving, donning formal dresses for his wedding to Jane Seymour (Kate Phillips).

Historically, more than a week has passed between the two events, but here we jump directly from Henry as he places the ring on his new bride’s finger, to the recovery of the bloodied severed head of ‘Anne by her ladies-in-waiting.

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A new challenge for the king’s advisor Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) must bring Mary, Henry’s defiant daughter fall into line, and thus stem the Catholic dissidence which is mobilizing behind its claim to the throne. At one point, Cromwell plans to persuade Mary with a letter from Margaret Pole (Harriet Walters), Mary’s mother. Reginald Pôlea prominent Catholic and author of a treatise against the king (who would become Archbishop of Canterbury two decades later in Mary’s reign).

“You are a serpent, Cromwell,” Margaret says, giving in to his instructions. “Oh no. A dog, ma’am,” he retorts. The distinction is telling, because his initial perception echoes a traditional historical interpretation of Cromwell’s character.

However, Wolf Hall’s Cromwell is neither slippery nor self-serving, but a principled servant of a capricious king, who learned to strike before he himself was struck. The dog metaphor is used twice in the episode: first after Cromwell makes a potentially dangerous public admission that he had promised to “keep” Mary.

He remembers that he was once called the “butcher’s dog,” which is entirely appropriate because “if you put me in charge of something, I’ll do it.” Soon after, there is one of many scenes in which he is alone in his office, where little is visible in the candlelit darkness except himself and the late Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), evoked by one’s imagination and a means of expressing one’s thoughts. strong.

It is the cardinal who reminds Cromwell that the “most important” quality of a dog is that it be “loyal and true”. Elsewhere, frequent flashbacks to a play – in which Wolsey is mocked – confirm that Cromwell is motivated, in part, to avenge his former master’s mistreatment.

Contemporary politics of period drama

Director Peter Kosminsky’s decision to shoot such scenes solely by candlelight caused a sensation for the previous series, as the reported cost of the candles was over £20,000. However, this choice demonstrates the meticulous attention to period detail and lends visible weight to the drama’s reimagined version of historical characters and events.

Equally distinctive is the rhythm and timing of the performance: the confidence to sometimes allow the story to be understood from what remains unsaid; absorb the viewer into a world as slow and contemplative as it is perilous and violent. If this seems like something rare in contemporary television, perhaps it’s a testament to how this constant, linear storytelling works to offer deeper insight rather than, say, simply distracting the viewer with shifts in time and place quite common.

Of course, despite the continuity of events on screen, a lot has happened off screen over the past nine years. For a time, the critical acclaim that greeted Wolf Hall allowed it to be held up as the embodiment of the value of public service, and in 2016, Rylance and Kosminsky both used their BAFTA speeches to praise and defend the BBC.

Importantly, the same creative team worked on the series’ return, including screenwriter Peter Straughan and cinematographer Gavin Finney. However, it will have escaped no one’s attention that since the original, we have entered a new phase of television in which deep-pocketed multinational streaming platforms jostle for position using somewhat different criteria of value.

What has been particularly galling for the BBC is the way services such as Netflix have poached its exclusive genres, turning period costume dramas into historically anomalous spectacle, a license for bawdy antics under a thin veneer of restrained dialogue.

It’s perhaps no surprise that over the past week, Wolf Hall executive producer Colin Callender has congratulated the BBC again for its commitment to creative production that resists the editorial decision-making algorithm that new providers increasingly rely on.

In a broader political context, the last decade has also been turbulent. One cannot fail to read the post-Brexit resonance of a conversation between Cromwell and the French ambassador Chapuys about the need for England to close its gap with Europe and the improbability that it would “undo all that that we have been doing lately.” four years.”

Perhaps it is partly the crisis of sovereignty and the forging of national identity during the Tudor period that makes it such a rich stage for the present. Needless to say, the course of the story itself contains spoilers and a tragic trajectory for Cromwell is likely to unfold over the remaining episodes, just as the first series followed the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell’s situation is precarious, that much is clear, and he begins The Mirror and the Light with the king as his only powerful friend. As always, the interest will surely lie not in whether, but how, the butcher’s dog will be defeated.