Wolf Hall's sombre ending is supposed to be anticlimactic – but still has one major flaw

The Mirror and The Light stays the course, too, breaking the mould of modern television once again with its series finale, which is an intentionally quiet and sombre affair that feels more like an epilogue – or perhaps more fittingly, a wake.

A series of strategic missteps and ill-judged remarks catches up with Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), sending the once-untouchable aide of King Henry VIII (Damian Lewis) into rigged interrogations that ultimately lead to his execution.

In a sense, there isn't an enormous amount of tension to these conversations; after all, the history that inspired Wolf Hall is widely known. There's unlikely to be any viewers earnestly wondering whether Cromwell might avoid the axe.

Instead, the finale reads more like an infuriating commentary on the cruel and deeply unfair nature of Henry VIII's reign, when a sudden shift in the volatile monarch's mood could spell death for whomever was unfortunate enough to be in his eye line.

Of course, Thomas Cromwell himself had played a key role in carrying out those erratic orders in the past, most notably in the case of Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy), whose path to the chopping block was uncannily similar to his own.

It's a parallel that doesn't escape the disgraced nobleman when he becomes a target of opportunistic rivals, remaining well aware of the perilous nature of his position even while refusing to admit to the baseless charges drawn up against him.

Instead, he rightly regards them as farcical, even making several jokes during his interviews with a cunning team of schemers, who hardly appreciate his humorous interjections (never mind, I did).

That said, there's a serious point to be drawn from The Mirror and The Light's finale, regarding how matters of fact can be distorted to suit the needs of those in power.

I can't have been the only one to wince when Cromwell states that the flimsy accusations against him would fail if brought to a fair trial and so, naturally, there would not be one at all. Instead, Parliament would simply declare him guilty.

It echoes a move made by the UK's previous government last April, when it passed a bill through Parliament defining Rwanda as a safe country to process asylum seekers, counteracting a Supreme Court judgement that came to the opposite verdict.

The controversial Rwanda policy was scrapped following the general election in July, but this incident illustrates how justice can still be withheld, and truth can still be clouded, to this day and in this very country – just as it was hundreds of years ago.

In the case of Cromwell, abject lies and conspiracy inevitably spell his end, but The Mirror and The Light's depiction of his final moments is where the show's seemingly purposeful sense of anticlimax wears thin.

While there is evidence to suggest that Cromwell's beheading was botched, requiring an unusually high number of strikes over a long period, screenwriter Peter Straughan and director Peter Kosminsky afford him a more dignified death by dream sequence.

As the grisly event is about to get underway, we're whisked off to the lush green abbey where Cromwell had once fantasised about retiring, which juxtaposes uncomfortably with the grim reality he finds himself in.

Nevertheless, it sits strangely with me that Cromwell's execution – the endpoint that this story has been building towards since the very beginning – is over so quickly and, ironically, painlessly.

While the programme draws explicit comparisons between the fates of Cromwell and Anne Boleyn, their depiction in the show actually couldn't be further apart.

Anne's walk to the executioner's stage is extended and heart-wrenching, depicting every stage of the ghastly preparation process and the cold terror it strikes in the heart of the trembling queen (played brilliantly by Claire Foy).

Admittedly, it made for great drama, but the manner in which Wolf Hall brushes over Cromwell's very same (if not, more gruesome) fate begs one simple question: Why?

It's not that I have a particular need to see a graphic beheading on BBC One right before bed on a Sunday evening, but I do worry that a degree of fetishisation has occurred regarding the execution of Anne Boleyn.

She is arguably the most famous of Henry VIII's wives in no small part because of the manner of her death, but I'm not convinced that justifies revelling in it to the extent that Wolf Hall does – both in season 1's end sequence, and the multiple callbacks in The Mirror and The Light.

That Cromwell was sent off with a soothing, if melancholic, image of paradise, only adds to the sense that Anne is a figure upon whom it has become acceptable to vividly inflict the darkest and saddest of ends. For Thomas, though, that would apparently be too crude.

Cromwell and Boleyn were both flawed people to varying degrees, but neither deserved to die in such a barbaric way and, therefore, we should avoid romanticising one execution over the other.

These were horrific and unjust betrayals by a mad king that history attempted to justify.

And though many of us have come to like Cromwell, in spite of his chequered history, through Rylance's nuanced portrayal, he shouldn't have preferential treatment in an otherwise unflinching depiction of an ugly period of history.

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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