Game of Thrones and Wolf Hall? Not obvious bedfellows you might think: the former supposedly crass and vulgar, with sex and mutilation to the fore, the latter, its fans would argue, the most subtle and sophisticated, even esoteric, of recent British literary adaptations.

But a little way into the latest season of Game of Thrones and the similarities between the two programmes are startling. The latest episode, High Sparrow, has star turns from Jonathan Pryceand Anton Lesser, who took centre stage in Wolf Hall as Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More. Large chunks of The High Sparrow were also filmed by candlelight, which seemed to be the favoured medium of Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky. Indeed, this episode of GoT was so dark that when I re-watched it in the evening rather than during daylight, whole new scenes emerged that had passed me by in a fog of murk the first time around. Some said whole episodes of Wolf Hall did the same for them.

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The broader links between the two programmes are obvious. Hilary Mantel’s books Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies tell of one of Britain’s own most famous game of thrones: Anne Boleyn’s manoeuvrings to get a crown on her head as Henry VIII’s wife, in a fervour so desperate that a byproduct of her machinations was that the English church broke from Rome. The fondness for beheadings that both series share is a clear by-product of the scale of what is at stake.

But you could also argue that the ruthless, calculating Thomas Cromwell, a far more sinister figure than the intensely humanising account of him by Mark Rylancein the TV series would have you believe, presides not only over the politics of Wolf Hall but stands as patron saint over GoT as well. Cromwell was the supreme exponent in Tudor England of a form of power play apparently bankrupt of ideology, bereft of altruism and based on harnessing people's constant fear of death. Just the same code that dominates life in Westeros.

^{Jonathan Pryce as the High Sparrow (Photo: HBO)}

Then there’s the casting. Viewers would expect the BBC’s Wolf Hall to be peopled by British Greats. The triumvirate of Rylance, Lesser and Pryce dominated the programme; making Damien Lewis’s commanding Henry VIII seem a sideshow. These aren’t actors that are household names in Britain. Pryce is perhaps best known, thanks to his once playing a Bond baddie. But they are the very best at their craft, choosing to continue to spend a great deal of their time on stage (indeed Rylance barely leaves it), arguably the most demanding test of performing prowess.

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And the Game of Thrones casting team clearly go to the theatre. Throughout its five series middle-aged actors barely known to the programme’s predominantly American market - Roger Allam, Ciaran Hinds, Charles Dance, Iain Glen, Michelle Fairley, David Bradley - have stolen scenes away from their younger, prettier co-stars. In the process they’ve given gravitas and subtlety to sequences in which clumsy scripts have veered into the obvious (never a problem in the at-times inscrutable Wolf Hall); and turned sublime the moments when the scriptwriters have found their form.

The terrifying bloodbath in season three known as the Red Wedding, for instance, shocked us with its horror, but why was it one of the best scenes of television made so far this century? Because of the face-off between Fairley's furious matriarch Catelyn Stark and Bradley’s vengeful psychopath Walder Frey. Both Fairley and Bradley are actors who’ve spent decades treading the boards in Britain and I doubt either have ever been approached for a selfie.

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All is left now is for Mark Rylance, probably our finest actor, to join the Game of Thrones gang. The man is unstuffy and up for a laugh so I can’t believe he wouldn’t take the opportunity if offered it. If he hadn’t much time it probably wouldn’t be hard to find him a role that had him killed off within a few episodes. Ideally beheaded, so he could feel in touch with his Tudor roots. It’s the way Cromwell went out after all.