Tudor England, specifically the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547), is the playground of Wolf Hall. Over the centuries, numerous plays, novels and paintings have tried to evoke the mix of lustiness and unpredictability that marked the period. What is it that drives this fascination with the Tudors? Is it an instinct to capture the thirst for power that defined the era, or is it something deeper - a search for the very roots of modern English life?
Wolf Hall, which charts the life of a blacksmith's boy who grew up to become Henry's chief minister, attempts to answer the question. Henry's was a quicksilver monarchy, underscored by the fact of his six wives in rather quick succession. Henry is routinely portrayed as the lascivious royal who, in his quest to get a male heir, went to war with the pope - a definitive break that led to the separation of the English Church from Rome.
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The show, while retaining his villainy, rescues the King from caricature. He is a fully-rounded player in Wolf Hall, here in command of his kingdom, there plagued by intense doubt. By turns assisting and thwarting him is his chief minister Cromwell, he of the strong will and astute temperament. Born into humble and violent beginnings (in the series' first episode, the young Thomas is beaten to a pulp by his drunk father), Cromwell comes to rule England by proxy, such is his power.
Setting out to capture the nub of this era, the show achieves a genuine voice for the time. The story of Cromwell's rise shimmers in Mantel's spry prose, as it does in Rylance's sharp portrayal. The series, which takes its name after the first book, actually includes material from both Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel, who won the Booker Prize for both books, is now writing the final part of the trilogy.
Unlike historical dramas that often take liberty with the truth, Wolf Hall chooses to stick to the facts as far as possible. In an interview with NPR, Ms Mantel said: "I make up as little as possible. I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are and to look where things have gone missing. And it's really in the gap - it's in the erasures - that I think the novelist can best go to work, because inevitably in history in any period, we know a lot about what happened, but we may be far hazier on why it happened."
This combining of historical detail with a fecund imagination stands the novels, and the closely-adapted series, in good stead. Henry divorces his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she is unable to give him a male heir. He then marries one Anne Boleyn, who too is incapable of fulfilling that particular wish. Henry would go on to marry four more times, each alliance midwifed by Cromwell. When things don't go as planned, the King turns to Cromwell to set matters right. In Tudor England, this translates to exile, or worse, execution. Queens, courtiers and noblemen are dispensed with as much dispatch, if not salacious cruelty, as those in George R R Martin's fictive universe.
The drama of Cromwell's rags-to-riches story - so unlikely at a time of fixed hierarches and social divisions - gives ballast to Wolf Hall. The deeply political show is part of an ongoing television renaissance that is reimagining both historical events and myths in a startlingly contemporary idiom. Like its more popular rival, Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall presents a phantasmagoric extravaganza of the characters' plans and ploys, toils and tactics. While power struggles drive the plot, they are refracted, in the modernist tradition, through the individual.
As with all great drama, the disparate parts coalesce to serve the whole. Amidst the action engendered by the hunt for an heir to the Crown, the series keeps a studious eye on the English break from papal authority. England under Henry VIII is grateful for finally having its own church and being allowed to read the Bible in English.
The show's scriptwriter, Peter Straughan, and director, Peter Kosminsky, consulted Ms Mantel at various stages of the adaptation. The series studiously follows the books, except for the small matter of jump cuts in the story's chronology. For dramatic effect, Ms Mantel shifted her narration back and forth in time. Since a television show burdened with narrative hijinks will be too convoluted to follow, the series opts for a straightforward storyline.
BBC is already committed to filming The Mirror and the Light, Part 3 of the Wolf Hall saga, which will continue Cromwell's story to the final stage of his execution. The way this is going, expect another satisfying season of what is already a medium-hopping modern classic.