"I created him..."
And the second episode turns out to be even better than the first, which is saying a lot. In fact, let us not mince words: yes, it looks fantastic and the acting is first rate. But this is an absolute masterpiece of televisual scriptwriting- and makes it clear that I need to read the original novels as it seems likely that Hilary Mantel may indeed be a genius.
This is a masterpiece of form and feeling. In showing us the deadly danger of Henry's court, where anyone can sudenly be judicially murdered at the whim of a capricious tyrant, we have a series of examples. Firstly, there is Lady Margaret and her affair and, indeed, marriage (without the king's permission) to Thomas, one of the younger, pooer Howards. Meg is soon made by Cromwell and her friend, in an extraordinary scene, to realise just how much trouble she's in... but Thomas stands to lose everything.
For this is a world in which it is treason to imagine the death of the king. To marry the king's niece is to maneouvre oneself closer to the throne, and this smacks of dangerous ambition.
Yet soon Cromwell himself faces the same danger, as absurd yet potentially damaging rumours start to spead of his wishing to marry the Lady Mary. The aggression with which he treats Chapuys here leaves us in no doubt that he realises fully the dangers of his situation.
And then we have poor Jane Seymour, having to endure the sexual attentions of that bloated, smelly man. She confesses to not enjoying said attentions, and worries that, without taking sexual pleasure, she will not conceive a son. What lies unspoken, horribly, is that, without a son, she will be yet another Anne Boleyn, fated for the block.
Finally, we have the devastating conclusion, as Cromwell shakily says all the wrong things to Wolsey's daughter, slowly realising exactly how he is seen... and may have been seen, at the end, by his beloved Wolsey himself.
Oh, the things one must sacrifice for the king. And he will always demand more and more...
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