Posted on 10/10/2015 2:40:56 PM PDT by Hugin
Thanks to "Game of Thrones," television just can't get enough of the Middle Ages. Those flickering smoky interiors, enormous woolly coats and bloody, ax-heavy battles; the remarkable décolletage, the picaresque foliage and mud. Sometimes there's magic, sometimes there isn't, but, by gosh, there's always plenty of bloody hacking and mud.
Certainly "The Last Kingdom," the BBC drama that premieres Saturday and is based on the first book of Bernard Cornwell's "Saxon Tales," checks all these boxes in short order.
Don't let the exposition-heavy first episode fool you; this may be a sword 'n' longboat epic with a handsome hero at its heart, but as adapted by Stephen Butchard, it subtly grows more complex with each passing hour until that hero becomes, to a certain extent, a supporting player in the far more dramatic epic of history.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
in the 1960s i read a children’s(?) historical dramatization of everyday life in england during the beaker period. i wish i could recall the title of the book now. imho it was very realistic and would make a very decent basis for a historical drama tv series. iirc, at the time, there was relatively little information available in local libraries about the beaker people.
Never watched Downton Abbey. Keeping Up Appearances, Coupling and Lovejoy is more my style.
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