Henry VIII

King of England and still hungry for a son, Henry moves through Wolf Hall as a man used to getting what he wants dressed up as what God wants. He is charming, restless, quick to warmth and quicker to grievance, already tangled in the marriage to Katherine that his desire for Anne Boleyn is about to unravel.

Damian Lewis plays majesty as mood rather than menace, all easy laughter until the room goes cold. The writing keeps him mostly offstage, felt before he's seen, so when he arrives every courtier recalibrates in real time. That control of temperature, sunny one moment and lethal the next, is what makes him frightening without raising his voice.