Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Mark Rylance, Damien Lewis, Claire Foy, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Bernard Hill, Joss Porter, Hannah Steele, Jessica Raine, Edward Holcroft, Joel MacCormack, Tom Holland, David Robb, Kate Philips, Luke Roberts, Richard Dillane, Will Keane,
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Alistair Mackenzie, Mark Gatiss, Anton Lesser, Saskia Reeves, Jonathan Pryce, Max Fowler, Joanne Whalley, Harry Lloyd, Charity Wakefield, Christopher Fairbank, Aimee Ffion-Edwards.

The wonderful  thing about history, the more you read into it, the more it grabs you…or it should, especially of presented right and with ambition and emotion. The problem with historical drama that has been taken from a novel is that it can be left to the adapter’s discretion in how much seen on screen is based in one camp of prejudice as opposed to the impartiality that is hoped for.

If historyis written by the winners, then the revisionists certainly get their chance as the centuries become blurred and thought and trends change like the tide of the Thames. For Hilary Mantel though, the screen adaptation of her best-selling novel, Wolf Hall, is as good a depiction of the relationship between King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell that you are likely to find outside of the R.S.C.

If the B.B.C. had scored a hit with life of Elizabeth Woodville, King Henry’s grandmother, in The White Queen, then Wolf Hall
was certainly on a par. Both series were helped hugely by the cast that had been placed within the framing of the stories, both brought a semblance of history to life that in the modern age tends to be wrongly and fatefully ignored and both had been given as much fanfare and near gravitas ascension bestowed upon them that it almost rivalled anything that Peter Jackson could do with Hobbits and Dwarfs.

For Wolf Hall though, the one big difference lay in the casting of Mark Rylance, Claire Foy and Damian Lewis in the three main roles of the story. This single casting decision, especially in Mark Rylance making a wonderful trip away from his natural home of the theatre to television and Claire Foy as the woman who divided opinion and a nation, Anne Boleyn, was as near to casting heaven as could be imagined. There is gravitas, there is the need to get the role just right lest it be dismissed by all, and who better than these two actors to carry the fortunes of the scheming second wife of Henry VIII and the man who changed the course of English history, Thomas Cromwell.

With outstanding contributions from the likes of Bernard Hill, a splendid Duke of Norfolk, Jessica Raine as Lady Rochford, the ever consummate Anton Lesser, Jonathan Pryce and Mark Gatiss as Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey and Stephen Gardiner and
the attention to detail for both the scenes and the idea of court, suspicious, full of favour and intrigue, in Henry’s reign as King, Wolf Hall, like The White Queen and the remarkable Hollow Crown series before it, surely should be appreciated and coveted.

A remarkable adaptation of a very good novel, Wolf Hall has everything you could desire from a historical drama.

Ian D. Hall