1.3 Anna Regina No, the best historical drama, like the best drama of any genre, simply reveals us to ourselves. Mad Men does it, I Claudius does it, Deadwood does it, and Wolf Hall does it. (The modern perspective’s a tricky one anyway. To himself, a sixteenth century politician or a 1960s ad man is every bit as modern a character as we are. And really, how far can a country in which “plagues of black-eyed ghost children” find their way onto the front pages of a national newspaper judge anyone as being premodern?) Into which camp does Cromwell fall? Anne and Thomas More think they know, the latter suggesting that our man would “serve the Sultan if the price was right”. One answer came from Cromwell’s frustration with More, Tyndale and barrister Bainham, none of whom were willing to “bend a point of principle” for their own survival. Political expedience trumps conviction in Cromwell’s case, making him perhaps the most modern politician we’ve seen on screen since The Thick Of It (which, incidentally, would make a very good companion piece to Wolf Hall. The swearing’s getting almost as good at any rate, thanks to the bollock-biting Duke of Norfolk and his thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus). Not quite as frustrated as Henry, it should be said. Anne’s negotiations with the King were a fascination of episode three. Claire Foy and Charity Wakefield are doing excellent work as the Boleyn sisters, one selling herself inch by inch and the other providing a devilish commentary on how the deal’s progressing. Wolf Hall is extremely smart on the narrowness of court life for women. Just as Cromwell, that son of an honest blacksmith, had to pull himself up through the ranks using his wits, so Anne had to do the same using her chief power – desirability. Gloating and brattish as she’s been (nowhere more so than that entertainingly furious dance in Calais), she’s not an unsympathetic character. That’s where hindsight really works for a series like Wolf Hall, in creating pathos. Our knowledge of Anne’s fate made her and her naïve promise that “when [her] son is born, they’ll all be powerless”, pitiful, in the first sense of the word. Anne’s value henceforth depends entirely on a quirk of genetics entirely outside of her control. Lose your footing in the careful transaction of virginity, desirability, and providing male heirs and what are the choices for a woman like Anne? A nunnery or the chopping block. Sympathy is an interesting question for this episode, which saw Cromwell’s underdog become top dog. It’s easy to back a scrapping parvenu, but how easy is it to like a Cromwell who’s not in opposition, but in power? A Cromwell in his late forties pursuing women half his age? Worse than that for a post-financial crisis audience, how easy is it to like a (whisper it) banker? Pretty easy, if screenwriter Peter Straughan keeps putting speeches in his mouth like that marvellous one he gave to Henry Percy. “The world is not run from where you think it is” was Cromwell’s “I am the one who knocks”. Who’d have thought a monologue on Tudor economics could make for such riveting TV? Luscious stuff. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
