Oh good lord yes, Luther and the Peasant's revolt. But it's the antisemitism that's especially hard to cope with because of subsequent German history. Incidentally, Luther is another one whose sense of humor did exist ("where there is faith, there is also laughter", quoth he, and associated the devil with depression - and writer's block, apparantly, since he famously threw an ink pot at him). I think people are just conditioned by pop culture to accept religious fanatics in only two flavours: either deadly serious throughout or, if they do smile, moustache twirling and making unfunny sadistic jokes, while somewhere a tortured victim cringes. That you could have a sense of humor including at your own expense and still be all "my way or the high way" and revile your opponents just goes against everything tv and many a book teaches.

Haven't seen the latest episode yet, but I dimly remember from the book Cromwell is frustrated when he realises More genuinely does not remember their first encounter at all, while it was unforgettable to young C. (This is something Hilary Mantel does more than once. In A Place of Greater Safety, school boy Robespierre is selected to make the big learned welcoming speech when the King and Queen visit his school, and a bored Marie Antoinette leaves early on, with teenage Maximilien resolutely continuing with the wretched speech. And remembering for the rest of his life, but guess who doesn't?) I'm not surprised they didn't include More's jokes en route to the scaffold and to the executioner, though, because Mantel doesn't, either, that much I do recall.

re: Anne: I had seen Claire Foy previously playing a thinly disguised Unity Mitford in the "Upstairs, Downstairs" sequel, and so far the performance is rather similar, which, well, not a parallel I can see.