A new historical drama, The Bastard Executioner, about a battle-weary knight is filled with bloody battles and graphic beheadings – and critics are already comparing it to HBO's Game of Thrones.
The ten-part series by Kurt Sutter, writer of the hit biker drama Sons of Anarchy, has just started on the FX network in the US with a UK premiere to be announced. It stars Australian actor Lee Jones, Sutter's wife Katey Sagal, and a cast of largely British actors including True Blood's Stephan Moyer and singer Ed Sheeran, who also sings the theme song.
It is set in 14th-century Wales, in the time of King Edward I, and tells the tale of loyal knight Wilkin Brattle (Jones). Sickened by the ravages of war, he has given up his bloodthirsty ways for a peaceful family life until a massacre of innocents forces him to take up the sword again.
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Reviews have been mixed, though most critics have compared it to Game of Thrones.
The Hollywood Reporter calls it "a medieval tale in the Game of Thrones vein", but also praises it as "intriguing and vast", a "meaty swords-and-castles epic" that "surprises and entertains".
In Deadline Hollywood, Dominic Pattern called it a complex tale, "played well", but one that is reminiscent of the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman trilogy – with "its heroic nuance and almost overwhelming sense of sadness".
Some critics hated it. Willa Paskin on Slate called it garbage, an "incoherent Game of Thrones knock-off that misunderstands everything that makes Game of Thrones good".
Paskin criticised the show's machismo, the lack of good female characters, and its use of violence. In Game of Throne, the constant violence, while sometimes thrilling, is there to make a point about a sick world, says Paskin. In contrast, Bastard has the violence down, but not its meaning. "The show believes in the entertainment of blood."
James Poniewozik in the New York Times agrees, calling it a lumbering saga of "brooding beardos feeling and dealing pain". Compared with the lavishly imagined societies of Thrones, says Poniewozik, Bastard's 14th-century Britain is "one turkey leg away from a Renaissance Faire".
In The Guardian, Brian Moylan urges us to be patient. OK, so GoT "blows this Bastard out of the water", says Moylan, but given time to mature it "could become a complicated political drama".
Moylan says the show "looks spectacular" and has "several great performances". The trouble is, with so many great shows on television at the moment, he plans to save his time for things "that are truly different" and, unfortunately, "this isn't one of those".
UK premiere date to be announced later this year.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"content_original","fid":"84588","attributes":{"class":"media-image"}}]]
