Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light | Preview (BBC One)

Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Jonathan Pryce, Kate Phillips and Lilit Lesser will all return for the six-part series. Harriet Walter joins the cast to play Lady Margaret Pole, with Timothy Spall as the Duke of Norfolk and Harry Melling as Thomas Wriothesley.

May, 1536. Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, is dead. As the axe drops, Thomas Cromwell emerges from the bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, and no private army. Navigating the moral complexities that accompany the exercise of power in this brutal and bloody time, Cromwell is caught between his desire to do what is right and his instinct to survive. But in the wake of Henry VIII having executed his queen, no one is safe.

Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future.

All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?

Eagerly awaited and years in the making, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light will trace the final four years of Cromwell’s life, completing his journey from self-made man to the most feared, influential figure of his time. Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a diplomat and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.

Plus Richard Dillane (Argo, Pennyworth) as the Duke of Suffolk, Will Keen (Operation Mincemeat, His Dark Materials) as Archbishop Cranmer, Hannah Steele (The Night Manager, Black Mirror) as Mary Shelton and Paul Clayton (The Full Monty, Him & Her) as Sir William Kingston.