logo
‘Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light' Review: No Century for Old Men

‘Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light' Review: No Century for Old Men

New York Times23-03-2025

'Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light' picks up where 'Wolf Hall' left off, amid the gruesome beheading of Anne Boleyn in 1536, which we get to see this time in even more gruesome detail.
In real life, however, there has been an unusually long gap between series and sequel. It has been 10 years since the release of 'Wolf Hall,' based on the first two novels in Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell series. This means that in 'The Mirror and the Light,' based on the final novel, the actor Mark Rylance is a decade older than the 50-something character he is playing.
And it works, because the Cromwell in the new six-episode series (beginning Sunday on PBS's 'Masterpiece') is haunted and beaten down by his work as Henry VIII's political and matrimonial fixer, a job that included fabricating the evidence that led to Boleyn's murder. In that first scene both we and Cromwell are reliving the beheading (necessary, from Henry's point of view, because Anne, his second wife, had not borne a son).
'The Mirror and the Light' is very much of a piece with the earlier 'Wolf Hall,' written and directed by the same men — Peter Straughan and Peter Kosminsky — 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.
But as the story of the commoner Cromwell's decline and abrupt fall, 'The Mirror and the Light' has an entirely different feel than the up-by-the-boot-straps, grimly celebratory 'Wolf Hall.' 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, 'The Mirror and the Light' continually drops in snippets of Cromwell's guilty memories in the form of bits of film we have already seen across the two series.
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's 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.
As worthy as 'The Mirror and the Light' is, the uncomfortable truth is that this retrospective, rueful gaze — the first and last shots of Rylance are of Cromwell looking backward — gets a little tedious across six episodes. It doesn't help that the events covered, including Henry's third through fifth marriages, do not have the juicy, morbid force that the deaths of Boleyn and Thomas More gave the first series.
One thing Straughan does to compensate is to chart Cromwell's moods through his interactions with a series of women: Boleyn's successor as queen, Jane Seymour (Kate Phillips), who dies needlessly after childbirth; Wolsey's daughter, Dorothea (Hannah Khalique-Brown), who blames Cromwell for her father's death; Henry's daughter Mary (an excellent Lilit Lesser), who becomes a pawn in the machinations of Cromwell's enemies.
These plot elements, given equal play with the court politics and battles over religion that actually determined Cromwell's fate, are a way to soften the character — 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 — especially in Rylance's scenes with Lesser — that the entirely male scenes around council tables and in whispered meetings lack.
As Cromwell's enemies marshal against him, Straughan and Kosminsky have trouble animating the court intrigue in any very interesting way — it plays as a shouty, monotonous version of fraternity life in which hazing results in beheading, if you're lucky, or having your intestines pulled out of your body, if you're not. The fine actors Timothy Spall and Alex Jennings, as Cromwell's two main antagonists, are not able to overcome the generic nature of these scenes.
'The Mirror and the Light' kicks into another gear, however, whenever Lewis is onscreen as the narcissistic yet knowing and perceptive Henry. Lewis's contained, preternaturally magnetic performance is as sure an embodiment as you could imagine of the force of a powerful monarch.
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's role in 'The Mirror and the Light' involves a preponderance of rueful staring into space. Henry may be the secondary character, but as the title says, he's the show's light.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Dayton Metro Library hosts free family summer film series downtown
Dayton Metro Library hosts free family summer film series downtown

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Dayton Metro Library hosts free family summer film series downtown

Previous coverage on the NEON. DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – The annual Dayton Metro Library's Summer Family Film Series is set to provide educational resources for young families. This free program is held through a triple partnership between DML, The NEON cinema and the local PBS affiliate station. Attendees will enjoy a read-along video, a PBS Kids program and a craft/activity on The NEON's cozy outside patio. Dayton Metro Library offers free lunches, and more for kids this summer Doors open at 10:30 a.m. every Saturday. Showtime is 11 a.m. Tickets are free, but are first-come, first-served basis. The full schedule is as follows. June 14: 'Be My Neighbor' A Daniel Tiger Friendship Celebration and a hands-on activity. (Ages 2-4) June 21: 'Carl the Collector' and creating collection jars. (Ages 4-8) June 28: 'Puppy Love: Tales of Tails' and visiting puppies from Adopt-A-Pit. (Families) July 5: 'Dinosaur Adventures' and digging for fossils/making dinosaur footprints. (Ages 3-5) July 12: 'Work it Out Wombats: Solving Problems Together' and making a whirligig. (Ages 3-6) July 19: 'The Wild Kratts: Wild Cats & Planet Heroes' and a visit from Five Rivers MetroParks with some of their special friends. (Ages 6-8) Dayton Library to host senior pizza parties with college help The Neon is in the heart of downtown Dayton, in the Oregon District, at 130 E. Fifth St. There is free street-level parking across the road. To learn more, click here or call the Library's Ask Me Line at (937) 463-2665. The library asks anyone who needs a sign language interpreter, assistive device, language translation, or accessibility services to call the Ask Me Line at (937) 463-2665 or click here. This is so they can get the service ready ahead of time. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

What's the best San Francisco TV show of all time? Chronicle readers (mostly) agree on this classic
What's the best San Francisco TV show of all time? Chronicle readers (mostly) agree on this classic

San Francisco Chronicle​

time6 hours ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

What's the best San Francisco TV show of all time? Chronicle readers (mostly) agree on this classic

Asked to choose the greatest San Francisco television show of all time, Chronicle readers picked an overwhelming favorite that has it all: a banger theme song, a future movie star, propulsive crime stories and location scouting that seemingly used every square inch of the city. But the poll, launched with my story lauding 1990s radio host detective show 'Midnight Caller,' says as much about Bay Area TV viewers as it does about the shows they voted for. Locals feel the deepest connection to programs that were filmed here instead of Hollywood or Vancouver. They don't share the world's love of 'Full House.' (Easily the most zeitgeist-y show on the list, the sitcom received less than 1% of the vote.) And they wrote in a lot of more obscure names, getting behind a 1950s program that wasn't on our master list. With 304 readers weighing in, there was a clear winner: the 1970s drama 'The Streets of San Francisco' with 37.5% of the vote. Commenters said the show, featuring a young Michael Douglas and Karl Malden as San Francisco Police Department homicide detectives, put in the work in San Francisco. 'Only this show placed the city up-front in its title,' said reader Mike Drew. 'The others were only incidentally set in San Francisco, but they easily could have been anywhere. (Producer) Quinn Martin made San Francisco a member of the cast and deserves all the credit here.' Reader David K. watches the show specifically for the locations. 'It's fascinating to see what neighborhoods like Dogpatch and Potrero Hill used to look like in the 1970s,' David wrote. 'I can't help pausing the show to see if I can recognize a particular corner.' 'The Streets of San Francisco' also received the single best comment, from an anonymous reader who voted for the show 'because I was on an episode as a casual street walker." Coming in second place was 'Tales of the City' (16.1%), based on Armistead Maupin's eponymous Chronicle column about a newcomer and her group of friends in San Francisco, which ran on PBS as a miniseries in 1993, then returned with sequels on Showtime in 1998 and 2001 and Netflix in 2019. Readers were passionate about the gay characters and authentically eccentric San Franciscans who weren't represented on network television. 'It so perfectly expresses the zeitgeist of the time and the innocence of its characters who moved to San Francisco seeking personal freedom in an era that was closeted, constrained and demanded conformity,' wrote reader Joe Grubb. The third highest poller was the 1996-2001 high-revving cop drama 'Nash Bridges' (8.9%), which despite middling critical appraisals was fiercely defended for its strong filming presence in the city. Rounding out the bottom of the list were 'Midnight Caller' (7.6%), the 2000s detective series 'Monk' (5.2%), recent sleuthing comedy 'A Man on the Inside' (4.3%) and 2010s HBO gay relationship drama 'Looking' (3.2%). 'Party of Five,' 'Charmed' and 'Full House' each received less than 2% of the vote. But the biggest surprise was a write-in candidate that wasn't included in our poll: 'The Lineup.' The 1950s cop show garnered 13 votes; enough to place it tied for sixth. Fans credited its use of locations throughout the city and close cooperation with the SFPD. 'They looked like cops. They acted like cops,' reader Bill Wilson wrote. 'And it's (San Francisco) in the 1950s. Classic.' One common theme among the comments: Several readers admitted to watching old episodes of San Francisco-based television shows just to reminisce about bygone eras. Others said 'Streets' and other shows were their first look at the city from afar. Sherwood Crump, for example, gave 'Streets' his vote, 'because it was filmed in San Francisco and it created in me, a 9-year-old boy in Detroit, a desire to travel to S.F. and see what the city was really like.'

Global internet artist-activist Blcksmth goes viral with Detroit art installation
Global internet artist-activist Blcksmth goes viral with Detroit art installation

Yahoo

time9 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Global internet artist-activist Blcksmth goes viral with Detroit art installation

Michael Schneider has gone viral yet again – this time, direct from Detroit. Known around the world by his internet handle Blcksmth, he is known for his whimsical, witty and thought-provoking typographical art that writes out both fun and profound quotes using balloons, flowers, leaves and/or LED lights. Commanding nearly a million followers on Instagram, almost every post he makes goes around the internet like a lightning bolt; if you've been on any major social media platform in the last few years, you've seen his work. Schneider's most recent work was done right in the heart of the Motor City during his first visit, and he confessed to the Free Press that he's fallen in love with Detroit. He was brought to town to create several installations around the campus of The Summit, a four-day event that convened business executives, major arts and music figures, and some of the most celebrated thinkers of the day to connect, collect and collaborate. One display he created here, a Campus Martius flower installation reading 'If being hard on yourself worked, it would have worked by now,' has racked up more than 23,000 Instagram likes since it was posted on Friday, June 7. He became so enamored with Detroit that he also created two different video montages chronicling his experiences in the city. Schneider, 51, first went viral in 2018 – before the balloons and flowers – with his 'Box Wine Boyfriend' series. 'I'd had a bad breakup,' he explained, 'and so I constructed a replacement boyfriend out of the boxes of wine that I used to self-medicate after the breakup. And we posted in all these different scenarios that I would fictionally do with my boyfriend. So we were grocery shopping together, and reading the paper in bed together, and it was just a silly, ridiculous series but it was actually pretty fun to do.' The following year came the balloon messages, which blew up during the 2020 Covid lockdown when celebrities began sharing his images. 'I love typographic art,' he said, 'and so it's always been fun to just play with words and quote art. My friend Johnny says, 'One day, I lived in a world without seeing balloons on a wall. And then I saw balloons on a wall, and then I never saw anything else.' 'So I'm sorry if they are a constant presence on your social media feed,' he added with a laugh. As the United States moved deeper into the pandemic era and the first Donald Trump presidency, Blcksmth's posts notably began drifting into themes of social activism and self-empowerment. Now, it's a regular occurrence to see posts with such phrases as 'You still haven't met all of the people who are going to love you' (a sign he recreated while in Detroit) or 'PBS didn't become 'woke,' you grew up to be a bad person.' The pinned post on Schneider's Instagram page reads, "When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king, the palace becomes a circus,' and he has also created signs that directly refer to Trump. 'My lean into activism was inevitable,' he said. 'As a queer, half-Mexican descent artist, my very life is political. That bled into my art, and quote artworks are so powerful to convey succinct messages. Unfortunately, they can also be interpreted differently by a great many people, but I feel like I have an obligation and a mission to amplify voices and words that would maybe not necessarily be amplified as much. My favorite thing is to collaborate with other artists and activists in communities that aren't seen as much as I am.' More: Detroit's 'best art show in 50 years' closing soon at Carr Center See also: Theaters, arts organizations across Michigan facing crisis after Trump's NEA cuts He initially worried that taking a political stance at this uncertain moment in American history would close a lot of doors for him. Instead, he found the opposite to be true. 'At the beginning of this year,' he said, 'I was facing a very difficult decision, because I knew that I would book less jobs if I still remained politically outspoken. For a few weeks, I did even archive a great number of my politically oriented posts to make my social media presence appear more universal and more neutral. 'And when the week of the inauguration hit, I was gripping my phone in my hand tightly, and I was like, 'F that. I'm not going to do that.' And I unarchived all of those, and then I did a post that directly addressed the inauguration.' The trade-off? Schneider quickly booked three jobs in a row. 'I intend to let my audience – who is, for the most part, aligned with my values – know where they should shop and where they should put their money, that they are worth people putting their money towards them and giving them their business,' he said. 'I had no preconceived notions of Detroit when Summit invited me out here, and since I have been here, I have been really, really charmed by the history of the city, a lot of the buildings. I find parallels between Detroit and Portland, honestly. I feel like they both have a really thriving art scene. Half of the people who have come up to approach me and say hi are artists! 'I went to the Eastern Market to do an installation, and there's an endless supply of colorful walls and murals that I could overlay my balloons on, so it was hard to pick one. And, again, everybody is so friendly, it also feels similar to Portland. I think both cities are coming from difficult recent pasts, and there's a sort of spirit of optimism in the air and hope for a brighter future. And, you know, anytime you visit a new city as a tourist, it's going to roll out the red carpet for you, and you're always going to find yourself being like, 'I could live here.' This is a great city, but I really do feel that about Detroit.' To follow Blcksmth and see more of his work, go to This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: An internet superstar fell in love with Detroit and went viral here

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store