When the Walls Close In on the ‘Wolf Hall’ Saga

Mark Rylance sat quietly and alone, his black-capped head bowed, his eyes closed. Nearby in a grand chamber, Damian Lewis stood resplendent in a huge gold jacket, playing King Henry VIII, as the director Peter Kosminsky rearranged some actors playing courtiers.

It was Shoot Day 77, last spring, at Bishop’s Palace in Wells, England, one of the locations for “The Mirror and the Light,” the second and final television series based on Hilary Mantel’s dazzling trilogy of novels. The books, and the show, chart the rise and fall of the energetic, inscrutable Thomas Cromwell — a blacksmith’s son who became chief minister and all-around fixer to the king before his astonishing career took a tragic turn.

The six-part “Mirror and the Light,” which will air on PBS’s Masterpiece starting Sunday, begins exactly where the last one ended, in 1536, as Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy) is beheaded.

That series, which aired on PBS in 2015, encompassed the trilogy’s first two novels: “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies.” It was a miracle of writerly and filmic compression, giving us Cromwell’s ascent to prominence; his successful negotiation of the king’s first divorce; the break with the Catholic church; and Anne Boleyn’s rise, and her fall, which is engineered by Cromwell at the king’s behest.

“The Mirror and the Light” has a near-identical creative team: written by Peter Straughan (who recently won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for “Conclave”), directed by Kosminsky and starring Rylance and Lewis, with British acting royalty, including Alex Jennings, Timothy Spall and Harriet Walter, in small roles. (This time, though, there is no comparably meaty female role to equal Foy’s turn as Anne Boleyn.)