Ignore the politics – Wolf Hall is a Tudor drama that beheads expectations

Rylance’s central performance grounds the show – keeps it from floating off into the existential troposphere – but the charge remains.

That’s where Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the second and final chapter in the BBC’s adaptation of the late Hilary Mantel’s historical novels, comes in.

Ignore the temptation to find modern political resonances within this narrative – this is about the fickleness of the human condition.