Yahoo News As we approach the finish line, Wolf Hall's second season is missing only one thing
In its first season, the BBC's Wolf Hall adapted Hilary Mantel's first two books about Thomas Cromwell's rise to power under Henry VIII. Thanks to a mesmerising performance by Mark Rylance, backed up by Damian Lewis as Henry and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn, it was a stunning and nuanced portrait of the tensions between power and principle, loyalty and love.
Nine years later, season two adapts Mantel's final Cromwell book, The Mirror and the Light.
Rylance, as you'd expect, makes a strong case for his being considered the best actor in the world, pound for pound: his Cromwell is shrewd, passionate, contained and always calculating. You can almost see the silent thoughts flicker across his eyelids.
Lewis, in playing the ageing, sick and increasingly despotic Henry, shows us all the charisma that commanded the loyalty of a man like Cromwell but also reveals the corruption wrought by a weakening grip on supreme power.
There are some changes: following the death of Bernard Hill, the irascible Duke of Norfolk is now played by Timothy Spall, perhaps lacking Hill's imposing physique but making up for it in old-man spite.
Alex Jennings has taken over seamlessly from Mark Gatiss as Cromwell's devious rival Stephen Gardiner and Lydia Leonard is as slyly commanding in the role of courtier Jane Rochford as Jessica Raine was.
It's a shame perhaps that Tom Holland has swapped his Tudor tights for a Spider-man onesie, but Charlie Rowe fills the role of Cromwell's son admirably.
But there's someone missing entirely: Saskia Reeves as Johane Williamson, Cromwell's sister-in-law who kept house for him after her sister's death and with whom he had an affair (in Mantel's story).
There's not much that could be done about this – the real-life Williamson was probably dead by the time of the events of season two, so it would be odd to have her knocking about the house.
But it's not specifically Reeves' character that we miss, a warm and thoughtful presence though she was, revealing an aspect of Cromwell we might not have otherwise seen. What's missing is a female force of equal stature to Cromwell's.
There are female characters, to be sure – Lady Mary (the future Queen) and Bess Oughtred, Cromwell's daughter-in-law, have both made strong impressions, but it's in the nature of Tudor society that as young women their existence is circumscribed entirely by men.
Their destinies are not their own to control, and they are buffeted by winds that men of status are better able to resist.
What about Jane Rochford? Again, while she has a certain standing at court – and quite as much guile as her male contemporaries – her scope is limited by her station.
What Reeves' Johane brought to the table was a woman who was a peer to Cromwell. You could say that Claire Foy's Anne Boleyn was intellectually and politically his equal, but she was always younger (and we all knew she was for the chop eventually).
Johane, in the confines of their household, was able to match him, challenge him and provide a perspective that none of the clever men at court ever could.
So while Wolf Hall may accurately – and brilliantly – reflect the patriarchy of Reformation-era Britain, where men were men and women were property, its second and final season lacks a dimension that the first displayed so well.
It's still one of the greatest TV achievements of the century, mind – and we can't wait to find out how it ends. Really happily, we expect, with no one being beheaded, divorced or excommunicated, because that would be a real downer.
Wolf Hall's final episode airs on BBC1 on Sunday 15 Dec at 9pm, and the series is available to stream on iPlayer.
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