'Wolf Hall's Premiere Introduces a "Three Card Trick"

Welcome to Wolf Hall, the world of 16th-century politics and intrigue. It is 1529, and the issue of King Henry VIII's first marriage is coming to a head. And, as the opening placard tells us, the king is not a forgiving man.

Cromwell: The rumor is the king has moved on from Mary Boleyn to her flat-chested sister.

Wolf Hall begins as it means to go on, a program that at once overwhelms you with the rich tapestry it presents, while having no inclination towards showy exposition. We begin in the middle of the current power struggles of King Henry VIII's court in the late 1520s. It is only hours before the Fall of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), Archbishop of York, and almoner to Henry since his ascent to the throne in 1509. This could have been the hour of the Fall itself, as two noblemen stand before Wolsey, demanding he hand over the Great Seal. That is if it hadn't been for the presence and quick thinking of one Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), lawyer to Wolsey and our anti-hero of this piece.

This may be the 1500s, but make no mistake, Cromwell is an anti-hero on par with Walter White of Breaking Bad or Don Draper of Mad Men. He is a hustler. A fast-on-his-feet, thinking, and daring bootstrapper who, as a child, was making money on the streets with one of the oldest cons known to our modern world - the Three Card Monte. As he tells Wolsey (in one of our many flashbacks, this one probably dated ~1521), most men thought they could easily beat a "child's card trick." That hustle got him in good with Wolsey from the start, the Cardinal himself being from lowly beginnings as the son of a Butcher. Upon meeting Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith, the Archbishop rejoices - finally, someone whose lowly birth is actually lower than his own. 

Sticking with the memories of 1521, Wolsey has just made a powerful enemy of the Boleyn family with a thoughtless flick of his wrist. As Cromwell stands there awaiting his audience, Wolsey blocks Thomas Boleyn's daughter Anne and her plans to marry Harry Percy (Harry Lloyd), a man above the station to which she's been assigned initially to wed. To him, this is merely practical. After all, the Boleyns are already a pain in his political side. 

Their older daughter, Mary Boleyn, is the King's not-quite-official mistress during this period. This issue is made more pertinent as the King ramps up his requests to find a reason to annul his first marriage, which continues not to produce any sort of male heir. All that is coming to fruition in the current day - or will soon, just as soon as those noblemen we met in the opener, Norfolk (Bernard Hill) and Suffolk (Richard Dillane) ride hither and yon (at this time of night! in this weather!) to fulfill requests from Cromwell that he made up right then and there to buy time. 

However, as we see in another set of memories, these dated ~1527, the Cardinal has been attempting to buy time for months. Despite the insistence by those like Norfolk that Wolsey is out to establish his own power, the truth is the Cardinal has been working frantically behind the scenes to get the pope to hand over some sort of annulment agreement to end Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon (Joanne Whalley). 

Wolsey just keeps losing—much like Cromwell, who loses his beloved wife and daughters to sweating sickness. In our present, Cromwell is a man who has little left but his work and his ties to the man who gave him a chance to be more than someone who sat around hearing about fence-line complaints. Too bad that man is sinking fast.

Perhaps that's why, when we finally rejoin the present for good, we see Cromwell sticking by his man, even as the rats around him, from Bishop Stephen Gardiner (Mark Gatiss) to the lute player Mark Smeaton (Max Fowler), desert the sinking ship. We have one-on-ones with the most crucial principal players in quick succession over the back half of the hour. There's the aforementioned Norfolk, who learns that Cromwell once fought with the French army. 

There's Thomas More (Anton Lesser), Cromwell's main personal enemy. There's Anne herself (Claire Foy), who has no interest in anyone who is not going to get her what she wants. And finally, after waiting almost the entire episode, we finally meet King Henry (Damien Lewis), to whom Cromwell puts himself forth to argue for and plead his master's case.

But our earliest flashback is one of the last of the hour, a memory within a flashback, if you will, to ~1495. After his wife passes, Cromwell honors her by fulfilling her (foolish) request for him to see his father one last time. It brings back memories of when he was blacksmith's boy Thomas Cromwell, being beaten half to death by his drunken father. It's a crucial memory - this is the lowest place he once was, where he is working hard to never to return. This is the story of how he rose. 

As the hour draws to a close, we see Cromwell, defiantly insisting on painting the Cardinal's Coat of Arms brighter, even as they arrive in exile. Loyal until the end - or until the time is right to change sides. Next week, we'll find out how long until that moment arrives.

This post was originally published April 2015. Updated 10.27.2024

The original 2015 Wolf Hall will continue on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations and the PBS app. All six episodes are available to stream on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and for members of PBS Passport. Wolf Hall: The Mirror & The Light will debut in 2025.