The action in Series 1 opens at a point in Cromwell's career where his master, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, is about to fall from power because of his failure to secure a marriage annulment for King Henry VIII of England.

Although originally set to film in Belgium,[17] most of the filming took place on location at some of the finest British medieval and Tudor houses and buildings, including Berkeley Castle, Gloucester Cathedral and Horton Court in Gloucestershire, Dover Castle and Penshurst Place in Kent, Broughton Castle and Chastleton House in Oxfordshire, Wells Cathedral, Barrington Court, Cothay Manor and Montacute House in Somerset, Stanway House in Gloucestershire, and Sherborne School in Dorset, Bristol Cathedral in Bristol, St Donat's Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, Hospital of St Cross in Hampshire, and Great Chalfield Manor and Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.

The Guardian speculated that the BBC's hiring of Kosminsky with Straughan showed they wanted "a darker and grittier take on British history" than more fanciful programmes such as The Tudors or The White Queen.

[14] Mantel called Straughan's scripts a "miracle of elegant compression and I believe with such a strong team the original material can only be enhanced".

[14] Kosminsky determined to undertake much of the interior filming by candlelight, this led some of the actors to collide with the scenery and to be concerned by the risk of fires.

[25] A second series of Wolf Hall was confirmed on 27 May 2019,[26] officially announced as Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, and began filming on 24 November 2023 with Mark Rylance, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Damian Lewis, Jonathan Pryce, Kate Phillips and Lilit Lesser all reprising their roles from the previous series.

[28] Critics have been "almost unanimous" in their praise of the series, with particular reference to the attention to period detail, the faithful adaptation of the source novels, Kosminsky's direction, and the performances of the leading cast members, particularly Rylance as Cromwell and Foy as Boleyn.

The website's critical consensus states, "Beautifully filmed and brilliantly acted, Wolf Hall masterfully brings Hilary Mantel's award-winning novels to life.

"[33] Will Dean in The Independent felt that it did not compare favourably with the stage adaptation of the book, yet he predicted that it would "secure a devoted following.

[38] Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker cited "small weaknesses", but wrote "the show’s deliberately paced six hours turn out to be riveting, precisely because they are committed, without apology or, often, much explanation, to the esotericism of their subject matter.