Wolf Hall, BBC Two, review: ‘actually rather good’

It starts in darkness. And no, it’s not a metaphor for the crooked timber of the human heart, it’s just bad lighting. Stanley Kubrick sourced his cameras from NASA in order to capture candlelight in his eighteenth-century epic Barry Lyndon; director Peter Kosminsky’s techniques in Tudor drama Wolf Hall seem decidedly sublunary by comparison. And it’s not just the odd interior scene: twilight, candlelight, or moonlight, a nation of viewers tuned into learn about Henry VIII’s Great Matter and instead spent the opening credits frantically ascertaining how to adjust our TV dials.

But if all I’ve got to kvetch about is colour contrast, it’s because as a story, Wolf Hall’s opening episode last night was actually rather good. We’ve all seen endless courtroom dramas about the divorce of Henry VIII from Katherine of Aragon – I suspect more of us know about ‘papal dispensation’ than can explain the doctrine of infallibility – so Kosminksy’s adaptation assumes familiarity on the part of the viewer and doesn’t waste time on the basics.