Grace Dent on TV: Damian Lewis smouldering in tights is epic value for licence-fee money

'Wolf Hall' is a fitting, elegant centrepiece for the BBC's Tudor season

Damian Lewis stars in the adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (BBC)

BBC2’s Tudor season, during this cold January, has felt as welcome to me as a 15-tog duvet and my fur-trimmed Hunter welly socks. It’s hard to quibble about value for money when six slices of Wolf Hall – Damian Lewis smouldering in tights – are on offer. Or when Hans Holbein’s portraits and courtly place are picked apart in a documentary by Waldemar Januszczak. Or when Edward VI’s christening procession is laboriously re-enacted by a cast of hundreds, overlooked by lovely Lucy Worsley and gloriously irascible fusspot David Starkey. I’ve even cogitated over “hidden killers” within Tudor homes, such as poisons, poxes etc.

And, yes, clearly, dying in bed at home of pox could be viewed as somewhat of a treat in Tudor times, when burning and beheading were alternatives, but it is good to know the Tudor Watchdog-type risks.

The Tudors – loved eternally by schoolchildren and armchair historians – are the gift that keeps on giving. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why post-Plantagenet European history suddenly seems more dazzling, sexy and compelling. Yet until Henry Tudor it is safe to say that tales of yore can sound like one endless cacophony of disgruntled dukes warring on scrubland. Henry VIII’s antics, by comparison, are a rip-roaring catalogue of chutzpah, sociopathy and smiting.

It’s hard not to fixate on the brutal, expedient manner in which Henry’s first five wives were dispatched, hard to balk at the manner in which Henry – Nigel Farage-style – stuck two fingers up at European interference (namely by Rome).

At school, I was enlivened by Elizabeth I’s proto-feminist refusal to marry into Spain or France and end up an attack dog or breeding mare for either. Oh, the continual Tudor-court-longing for a simple, straightforward son and heir to solve its succession woes.

Henry VIII spent his entire life at the mercy of menstrual cycles and miscarriages, yet seemingly had no problem getting his mistresses up the duff. No wonder the BBC’s lightweight Hollyoaks-style history romp The Tudors was so much bloody fun.

This considered, the problem the BBC faces with Wolf Hall is that here is a book that steers elegantly away from the swashbuckle, the sex and the skewered heretics. More facts, less fallacy and frottage. Less Hollyoaks, more House of Cards. Wolf Hall dwells instead on the quiet determination of men to maintain power, or be close to its source. A newbie to Tudor history might watch episode one – an hour spent tracking a largely silent Thomas Cromwell between Henry’s court and the home of his banished mentor Cardinal Wolsey – and wonder how on Earth the Tudor era excites so many.

I loved Mark Rylance’s intensely understated Cromwell. Just like so many faces in Westminster now, Cromwell plays a quietly steely game of softly, softly, catchee monkey. The monkey, in this case, being a place at the right hand of the king. Cromwell is thrifty – stingy even – with words. He leaves silences for others to fill with words that might incriminate.

Mark Rylance in impressive form as Thomas Cromwell (BBC)

Cromwell’s run-ins with the Duke of Norfolk (Bernard Hill) are delicious. Here are two men quietly clinging to their non-specific job roles within court, both acutely aware what happens when Henry VIII either bores of you, or feels threatened. Beheading almost feels like the kinder option when we visit Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), once the King’s faithful friend, but now deflated, put out to pasture, accused of disloyalty, sent away to die.

In Wolf Hall, much like in Rose Tremain’s excellent novel Restoration, we examine cliques of power and how cold it is in social Siberia once your sense of value wears thin.

Damian Lewis as Henry VIII is marvellously weaselly, perfectly petulant and clearly enamoured by the false laughs and obsequious forelock-tugging that envelop him.

Wolf Hall shows us that Henry VIII at any time is never the brains at the table. Henry’s power has arrived purely by accident of birth. He needs others for foreign-policy gruntwork, or merely to applaud his archery prowess. The man, quite frankly, is a bit of a bore, and a loose cannon with regard to loyalties.

We’re asked to ponder why men like Cromwell, Wolsey or Norfolk are so drawn to this decidedly dodgy game. One moment, on Wolf Hall, you could be No 1 guest at the feast, the next, your head might be on a spike. To quote a rival TV show’s motto: “When you play the Game of Thrones, you either win or die”.

There’s a sense with Cromwell – we learn through flashbacks – that his violent childhood at the hands of his father (played by Christopher Fairbank) has killed parts of his soul already. Still, as the episodes march on – I’ve watched four so far in preview videos – I have drawn no closer to knowing what spurred Cromwell and his allies on, other than how wonderful it feels to be “inside the tent pissing out”.

Perhaps this is the point. For some people, then and now, this feeling is more than enough.