7.059 minSeason 2 • Episode 6
LatestCromwell is stripped of his titles and brought to the Tower of London on a charge of treason. He has no friends to speak for him but plenty of enemies among his prosecutors.
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the King dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope and most of Europe oppose him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer, and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
Acting
Mark Rylance's silences speak entire treaties.
Direction
Kosminsky shoots power like a horror film.
Writing
Mantel's dialogue: Machiavelli meets poetry.
Creators
Peter Straughan, Peter Kosminsky, Hilary Mantel
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Rylance refused to research the real Cromwell, trusting Mantel's novels alone.
Mantel's 'Cromwell trilogy' sparked academic fights: she made a villain sympathetic, and some historians never forgave her.
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