Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands
This is ITV's (UK television) attempt to rip off Game of Thrones, following the BBC's try with "The Last Kingdom".
From the start of the theme music, it's GoT inspiration is blatant, and the setting is transposed from 8th century Denmark to Geneticfantasyland(TM). If you want historical authenticity, this isn't the program you are looking for. It also discards most of the original plot, keeping only names and some of the themes.
Unfortunately for it's GoT aspirations, this show falls foul of the UK establishment's belief that all fantasy is for kids. Given a 7pm time slot, sex and violence are neutered. The BBC's Last Kingdom go round this by pretending to be history rather than fantasy, but prevalence of trolls, and implausibly PC mix of ethnicities makes that not an option here.
William Hurt manages to break his own record here. Rather than his character dying early on, he actually is actually already dead when the story begins. I wonder how much he got paid? Sad to say, Sean Bean isn't in this.
So, is it really as bad as I make it sound? No, not really. The sets, creature effects, and acting are decent, and it takes itself fairly seriously. The deviation from the original story means that I at least don't know what will happen next. I have seen two episodes now, and will probably stick with it. It's biggest problem is that it doesn't know if its targeted at adults or children. It's slow and action is sparse for a young audience, and it doesn't have enough sex, violence, or complexity for an older audience. ITV's previous show in the Sunday 7pm timeslot, Jekyll and Hyde, suffered from exactly the same problem.
From the start of the theme music, it's GoT inspiration is blatant, and the setting is transposed from 8th century Denmark to Geneticfantasyland(TM). If you want historical authenticity, this isn't the program you are looking for. It also discards most of the original plot, keeping only names and some of the themes.
Unfortunately for it's GoT aspirations, this show falls foul of the UK establishment's belief that all fantasy is for kids. Given a 7pm time slot, sex and violence are neutered. The BBC's Last Kingdom go round this by pretending to be history rather than fantasy, but prevalence of trolls, and implausibly PC mix of ethnicities makes that not an option here.
William Hurt manages to break his own record here. Rather than his character dying early on, he actually is actually already dead when the story begins. I wonder how much he got paid? Sad to say, Sean Bean isn't in this.
So, is it really as bad as I make it sound? No, not really. The sets, creature effects, and acting are decent, and it takes itself fairly seriously. The deviation from the original story means that I at least don't know what will happen next. I have seen two episodes now, and will probably stick with it. It's biggest problem is that it doesn't know if its targeted at adults or children. It's slow and action is sparse for a young audience, and it doesn't have enough sex, violence, or complexity for an older audience. ITV's previous show in the Sunday 7pm timeslot, Jekyll and Hyde, suffered from exactly the same problem.
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Comments
Very derivative this episode was. Not only do we have tolkienesque orcs (by some other, instantly forgettable name), but the entire plot was borrowed from an old western.
Spoilers, I guess:
specifically the one where a foolish adolescent riles up the Native Americans (Injuns/orcs/whatever) by disturbing a burial site, and our protagonists have to take refuge from the angry horde in the an old farmhouse, inhabited by pacifists.
Now, I would have been more willing to forgive such a derivative plot if there had been some lampshading, as it would have been in, say, Xena, Warrior Princess. But everything was played deadly straight, perhaps assuming no one watching was old enough to recognise the trope? Indeed, the show rather resembles Xena with all the humour sucked out.
What I actually found a little disturbing about about this episode was how our "hero" resolved the issue, with cultural insensitivity that would have seemed crass even back in the 1940s. Now, if Beowulf had agonised of the morality of his actions (burning the sacred burial site), or been portrayed as a darker, more morally ambiguous protagonist, rather than a cookie-cutter good guy, then it might have added some depth and complexity. However, it felt more like the hack writer dashed off the script without giving a moment's thought to the implications of what they where writing.
Next week: from Dune to Rakis to The Shieldlands, sandworms come to Beowulf!
We had a really ropey CGI monster this week, a shame after the passable sand worm they had a couple of weeks back.
However, it did elicit some amusing DnDish dialogue:
Inexperienced young huskarl: "a Barghast!"
Veteran kill-steeling monster slayer: "It's not a Barghast, its a Wulfling Dog." ("Monstrous Compendium volume 3 page 57" he failed to add).
Curious mention of "the Common tongue" in this episode too...
It really suffered when it was on opposite The Night Manager, which looked like a hollywood movie, when Beowulf looked like a school play (without the excuse of a low budget by all accounts).
My thoughts are that it's passable when its dealing with the monsters/etc but the human interaction and the various tribal rivalries are terrible. The actor playing the treacherous brother is dreadful and the whole "villainous horde" concept is difficult to take when there are maybe 30 baddies on screen. The giants at the end look interesting, but I'm pretty sure I'll be giving it a miss from now on.
And I think 30 baddies is generous, I didn't count more than 12 non-cgi.
Game of Thrones is mostly the one exception on the whole, much like the LOTR trilogy is still largely unmatched in fantasy film for the depth of it's set and costume design and attention to detail and just research and craft that went into it. Both make it feel like these are other cultures with long histories, beliefs, practices etc just from the care for set and costume design alone.
Until others actually give more detail to this side I think it will continue to feel a bit plastic (which is fine if it's a campy series like Hercules or Zena but otherwise
As to this series, it just wasn't Beowulf for me, so along with other things I couldn't take more than one episode.