Spoilers King & Conquerer

[Paul Farquhar]

It's just doing a Braveheart. If you are comfortable with the Braveheart approach to history, you'll be fine with this. If you aren't, then you'll have the same problems with this that you'd have with Braveheart. It just comes down to what you're looking for in a a quasi-historical show. I very much enjoyed it.

But to me, it doesn't look like it's doing a Braveheart. It looks like it's trying to stick to what is in the record but making silly mistakes. Nothing is changed for a reason. There isn't much known about Harold's character, and what there is is mostly Norman propaganda. So there was a real opportunity to create an interesting character from scratch, without having to go against any documented facts. But no, he is a dull stick.

William, sure, we can deduce a lot about his character from his documented actions.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The problem is, it looks like its trying to be historical, and failing. Wolf Hall deliberately put a different twist on the history-what-everyone-knows, and thereby is a worth watching TV show. This looks like it's just doing a bad job at regurgitating a tired history lesson.

Lucy Worsley discussing whether William was a war criminal was a more entertaining TV show.

Yeah I'd ignored it on those grounds and casting Norton as a lead (also I mistakenly assumed he was playing William, glad to see he isn't) who chewed the scenery so ferociously in the later seasons of Happy Valley that for my money he completely annihilated any suspension of disbelief I could manage (he was pretty okay in the first one). I can give it an episode though and see if it works for me. Shows set in this era always seems to be a little hit and miss for me, like I enjoyed the obviously rather silly Vikings whilst Ragnar was around (less so afterwards) but despite sticking with it for over a season, just couldn't stand The Last Kingdom. With The Last Kingdom it was in large part because the main character was a bad-natured narcissistic scumbag who we were meant to root for, not pray for the horrible death of, and usually you get past that by casting someone charismatic (like say, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau!), but they cast someone who played him as charmless smirking jerk who just emphasized how awful this guy was - I don't think I've ever thought "please die please die please die" about a protagonist so much before lol.

 

[Morrus]

But to me, it doesn't look like it's doing a Braveheart.

Yes, I got that. You were clear.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah I'd ignored it on those grounds and casting Norton as a lead (also I mistakenly assumed he was playing William, glad to see he isn't) who chewed the scenery so ferociously in the later seasons of Happy Valley that for my money he completely annihilated any suspension of disbelief I could manage (he was pretty okay in the first one). I can give it an episode though and see if it works for me. Shows set in this era always seems to be a little hit and miss for me, like I enjoyed the obviously rather silly Vikings whilst Ragnar was around (less so afterwards) but despite sticking with it for over a season, just couldn't stand The Last Kingdom. With The Last Kingdom it was in large part because the main character was a bad-natured narcissistic scumbag who we were meant to root for, not pray for the horrible death of, and usually you get past that by casting someone charismatic (like say, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau!), but they cast someone who played him as charmless smirking jerk who just emphasized how awful this guy was - I don't think I've ever thought "please die please die please die" about a protagonist so much before lol.

Yeah, I felt exactly the same about Last Kingdom. I have no interest rooting for some jerk whose problems are largely of their own making.

And this was a completely fictional character, so he is only a jerk because the author wrote him that way.

As for William, he was pretty much the trope namer for evil bstd. Which this show somehow plays down. So your problem is, how do you tell a story when the history tells use evil wins hands down? It looks like they are going for “well he really wasn’t all that evil”, which is a pretty horrible message in this age.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Having watch more of the show, it definitely leans heavily into pro-Norman propaganda. Which in one sense is unsurprising, as the winners got to write the history, and then down the years the story has been used to justify the authority of the English establishment. But in 2025 I would have expected a different take on the thousand year old story. But here we have corrupt backstabbing Saxons who are clearly incapable of governing their own affairs, and a couple of unaccountably decent modern-valued men who have to fight in order to give them the ruler they clearly need.

Given that Harold didn't clean the blood from his sword before sheathing it, I suspect he is doomed.

And Juliet Stephenson who thinks she is doing Shakespeare. If only we could have resurrected him to write this!