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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
37
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The TelegraphJan 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
There is no small thrill in watching Rylance, at last, go through the gears. .... Damian Lewis is excellent as Henry, his body and country and wives failing him. .... Few moments of inelegance stand out in Peter Straughan’s otherwise superb scripts, which are marvels of concision.
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The GuardianJan 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
The script is a miracle of compression and architecture, bearing loads that ought to be impossible. The first did justice to 1,200 pages of Mantel’s perfect prose in six hour-long episodes; this distils the essence of her trilogy’s last 900. .... Six hours of magic.
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Apr 3, 2015
Season 1 Review:
It takes some while before the immensity of the history it covers dawns on a viewer of this extraordinary series, so deftly is that history--the reign of Henry VIII (Damian Lewis), Henry’s court, the dawn of the Protestant Reformation in England--woven into drama here.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 2, 2015
Season 1 Review:
This magnificent six-part Masterpiece adaption.... In a powerfully sustained performance of subtle sorrow and steely resolve, Rylance reveals a man who takes little pleasure in carrying out his master's harrowing whims. The true pleasure is entirely the viewers. [6-19 Apr 2015, p.14]
Mar 26, 2025IndieWireMar 24, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Rylance’s portrayal, along with the parallels it invokes, are incentive enough to revive “Wolf Hall” one last time. He understands Cromwell’s positioning so innately, it’s impossible not to feel swept up in every brief joyful interlude before being thrown down again as his fortunes inevitably sour.
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Mar 30, 2015
Season 1 Review:
This excellent six-part series brings the statesman's [Thomas Cromwell's] shady story to light with wit, empathy, and even surprise. [3 Apr 2015, p.59]
TV Guide MagazineMar 20, 2025
Season 2 Review:
In a production shimmering with period authenticity, Rylance reaffirms his status among U.K. acting royalty, creating a figure weighted by sorrow and remorse. [24 Mar - 13 Apr 2025, p.4]
Apr 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
It will be interesting to see how Rylance’s superb performance evolves as Cromwell gets within spitting distance of the throne. For the moment, he’s a perfect model of stoicism, and the few flickers of feeling that cross his face (a smattering of tears after the death of his wife and children) hint that when Cromwell’s downfall comes--as history says it must--it won’t be pretty. The supporting actors are equally excellent.
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Apr 2, 2015
Season 1 Review:
It is the epitome of slow drama, with action taking place off-screen while intentional silences wreak havoc in the hollow Tudor halls. The miniseries pays off along the way, particularly with Rylance’s extraordinary performance, and it also accumulates into something gripping in the last three episodes.
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Apr 2, 2015
Mar 18, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Despite the mammoth 10-year gap between seasons, they flow seamlessly into one another, which is no small feat considering the likes of the Duke of Norfolk had to be recast. The only real issue with this season, perhaps, is that it has to condense nearly 800 pages of Mantel’s fiction into just six episodes.
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The Observer (UK)Jan 7, 2025
Apr 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
It’s a lush production--The costumes! The locations!--that’s still appropriately gritty for its 1529 setting and sure to appeal to fans of historical fiction. But it may be a bit slow-paced for fans of Showtime’s “The Tudors,” which told the same story with more soapy shenanigans and gusto. Mr. Rylance gives a quietly commanding performance as the intelligent, politically astute Cromwell.
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Apr 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Scripter Peter Straughan masterfully hits almost all the right notes in this fictionalized account of Cromwell.... The stage actor doesn’t convey the cunning with which Mantel imbues her protagonist. At times his lawyer seems a bit thick. At the close of next week, however, Cromwell--and Rylance--find their footing.
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Apr 1, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Although Wolf Hall does require an unusual amount of work on the viewer’s part, as well as the patience of, well, a saint, the performances and how they eventually elucidate the theme of what power can do to a man and a nation when it becomes too personal, make it mostly but belatedly worthwhile.
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Apr 3, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The six-part miniseries, premiering Sunday on PBS, is indeed largely excellent.... But that sense of dramatic conservation gets just a little bit stifling, and sometimes Peter Kosminsky's staid direction makes the series feel like a top-collar button begging to be undone, even just for a second, while no one is looking.
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Apr 2, 2015
Season 1 Review:
It’s acutely intelligent, luxuriously dressed and well acted across the board. It’s also notably serious and quiet, despite the occasional beheading or session on the rack required by a tale.... [But] the emotional and psychological underpinnings of the narrative don’t resonate as strongly as its ideas about history and governance.
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Mar 24, 2025
Season 2 Review:
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.
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