Spoiler alert: William conquers - TV review
BBC1 opened its autumn season (in August - go figure) with an historical drama about events leading up to the Battle of Hastings, featuring as much embroidery as the Bayeux Tapestry.
It's always frustrated me, as a bit of a history buff, when such dramatisations depart radically from the truth - or as near the truth as one is ever likely to come with history, axiomatically, being written by the victors. With historical events as exciting and improbable as these, why gild the lily? Truth is usually stranger than fiction so if it isn't already dramatic enough for your tastes, make Game of Thrones instead.
Admittedly, King & Conqueror, the BBC television offering in question, has a lot of ground to cover and a lot of characters to work with - or gloss over, if not excise entirely. The storyline is also pretty convoluted so elision and omission is the order of the day if the plot is not to become bogged down in tedious explication. Some artistic licence must be granted the scriptwriter for the story to survive as drama: a form of popular entertainment after all, not a lecture.
I should come clean at this point and reveal that I only managed to watch the first two episodes (of eight) before departing for my summer holiday - summer, BBC please note - but that was enough to get the picture. I found the first episode dire - confusing and, as usual with these productions, dark and mumbled - verisimilitude seemingly being restricted solely to dastardly rushlight encounters and whispered conspiracies. Heaven forfend such skullduggery should be seen or overheard, even by the audience. With a plot this dense it does help viewers to keep up if they can at least see and hear what's going on. TV studios do have electric lights and microphones, guys, that's why it's the art of illusion!
That said, the second episode got into its stride: the flashbacks started to make more sense and one became accustomed to the subfusc. The show opened with a monochrome vision of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 but the action really kicks off in 1043 with the coronation of Edward the Confessor, creepily realised by Eddie Marsan, accompanied by his scheming and domineering mother, Emma of Normandy, camped-up to chilling effect by Juliet Stevenson. Neither character seems to have been as awful in reality as this version portrays but their on-screen relationship certainly adds a bit of melodramatic spice, however ahistorical.
William of Normandy and Harold Godwinson, played respectively by James Norton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, were only just embarking on their ultimately combative relationship when I had to stop watching but I gather many liberties were taken with the facts in subsequent episodes, including them sharing a bath. However, short of a full-on sex scene, a bathtub is as good a pretext as any for getting two fit young actors naked, doubtless increasing the ratings in the process.
I also read that the infamous arrow scene, while interestingly handled (no spoiler here), is another one in the eye for the facts, although historical versions of Harold's demise do vary and even the Bayeux Tapestry's depiction is ambiguous. In reality, there was also an improbable number of Ediths, several of whom have here been removed or, as with Edith the Fair for example, renamed. Fair enough.
I'll reserve further judgment until I get back from a blissfully telly-free fortnight.