Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light – Mark Rylance’s titanic Tudor drama is the best TV you’ll see all year

The cast are so incredible that even the bit parts feel like stars of the future. Peter Kosminsky’s rich, clever adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels needs to be plunged into without distraction

It has been nine years since the first blockbuster run of Wolf Hall shot complete unknown “Mark Rylance” to critical and commercial acclaim, and a smarter TV columnist who pays more attention to geopolitics would draw out a doomed attempt at a metaphor here. One about how the world has so drastically changed since 2015 – all those prime ministers and monarchs and presidents, and also Brexit and Bake Off going to Channel 4 – and I’d nod at the returning treacle-moving drama of court intrigue and everyone caring slightly too much about blood and go: “See? It’s like that, isn’t it. It’s all sort of like that.” That’s the kind of thing writers who get tie-in TV podcasts say in their opening paragraphs, and I would quite like one of those.

Sadly, I think Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (Sunday 10 November, 9pm, BBC Two) might be cleverer than that. A moment for the cast, which – because they all fit so perfectly and believably into this rich world – it’s oddly easy to take for granted, but I mean, come on: Damian Lewis as Henry VIII on a delirious quest for a son before the gout really sets in; Kate Phillips as the doomed Jane Seymour, always staring nervously at her stomach and navigating the etiquette of royal court about as elegantly as I might get a big table through a small doorway; Jonathan Pryce’s Cardinal Wolsey creaks into rooms with that wry Prycean smile, always knowing more than you do by two or three magnitudes; Timothy Spall’s Duke of Norfolk does the same thing but in reverse, stumbling round marble columns and looking as confused as a dog does when you pretend to throw a stick but don’t actually throw it.