You Know Nothin', Robert Catesby

[Plynkes]

Anybody watch Gunpowder tonight? I did, and I was rather taken with it. I liked how it looked and felt (which isn't something I can say about most historical dramas in the 21st Century). I thought there were some good performances, and I think our old pal Jon Snow is really suited to the period. He looks like he belongs there (then?), I reckon.

I'm half-tempted to get some Elizabethan/Jacobean figures and have them assault a farmhouse full of rebellious ruffians. It's a good look, I really might paint one or two (bit late for this board's painting club, but oh well).


Of course, as seems obligatory these days, there was some messing about with history. Don't know why they feel compelled to do this, but they do. I mean, yeah, John Gerard escaped from the Tower, but wasn't it in the 1590s, when Elizabeth was still on the throne? It had bugger-all to do with the Gunpowder Plot. I guess they added it for drama (like the story needs any more of that), but hell, his actual escape was much more exciting and dynamic than the one in the show. If you're gonna put this stuff in, at least do it justice!

Still, it wasn't enough to stop me enjoying it, and I'm glad they left in the Fred Karno bumbling with the powder at Holbeche and didn't delete it to make the protagonists look more cool and heroic. That was always my favourite part of the story.


No doubt period experts will find many reasons to hate it (it's perfectly natural for wargaming nerds, I'm just the same), but as a layman, I was enthralled from start to finish.

[Ninefingers]

Will probably watch it as it's broadcast rather than splurge on iPlayer.
I enjoyed it. Performances were good, none of the overacting that sometimes plagues BBC costume dramas. This was very much more Tom Hardy's Taboo than Poldark.

[olicana]

I was out last night so I'll watch it on iplayer tonight. I thought the trailer looked quite good.

Kit Harrington was spotted in Ilkley earlier in the year, now we know why. Some of it was filmed locally, apparently.

[robh]

Yes, watched and enjoyed the first episode last night, will probably take a look each week.

Interesting they include the "Peine forte" execution (based presumably on the actual Clitheroe judgement) but why they chose to use the rock? Seems an odd choice to show an execution (or two) in graphic detail but make it more violent than the original.

All in all it is well worth watching.

[MartinR]

I'm going to watch it tonight. Loveable Mr Harrington is a descendant of Catesby (and various other posh types, as his dad is a baronet). iirc it is his middle name. So playing his great, great, great grandfather should come naturally

[Cat]

Alas, I'm not really in a mood to watch graphically brutal scenes of torture now, or in the foreseeable future.  I might start watching the show mid-stream if they ease off on that.

[flags_of_war]

I'll need to give it a watch. I might wait until it's all finished and watch it all at once.

[Plynkes]

They have followed Sky's lead and put the whole thing on the player right away. Seems to be the trend for TV shows at the minute. You don't need to wait if you don't want to. I watched it as one long movie on Saturday night.

[flags_of_war]

They have followed Sky's lead and put the whole thing on the player right away. Seems to be the trend for TV shows at the minute. You don't need to wait if you don't want to. I watched it as one long movie on Saturday night.

Excellent news

[charla51]

Not as intriguing as Wolf Hall, and rather slowly paced. What it needs is a fire-cracker up its backside.

[Metternich]

A firecracker up its backside ?  Now there would be a peine forte

[Captain Blood]

I watched episode 1. Must catch up with the rest of it. I thought it was pretty good, although I didn’t quite buy Mark Gatiss as Robert Cecil. Can never really take him quite seriously, wonderful as he is. His characters all seem like slightly pantomime creations.

I thought Kit Harington was good - although basically playing a slightly grumpier version of Jon Snow. Let’s hope there’s more to him as an actor than the one character.

There’s been a lot of media comment and public mithering about the gratuitous depiction of torture and execution, but it didn’t seem excessive to me. Just showing the ghastly things that happened at the time. I found those scenes nowhere near as harrowing as the opening execution scenes of Shekhar Kapur’s ‘Elizabeth’ which was made 20 years ago. And the hanging, drawing and quartering in ‘Braveheart’ was a lot more graphic and drawn out - excuse the pun - than this. So I don’t quite understand the furore. I think perhaps there’s a degree of old fashioned English puritanism and conservatism at work here which says THE BBC shouldn’t stoop to making programmes which show such distasteful scenes. Truth be told,you can see far worse gore and violence in endless movies and on TV programmes too. I don’t think there was any salacious intent to make torture porn on the part of the programme makers here - I think they were just trying to show what an alien, brutal world it was at the time - how different from our own.

[charla51]

...I suspect Jacobean women didn't shave their armpits, however.

[flashman1889]

So, intrigued by your discussion but a little confused.  Over here in the States I can find something called Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.  I am not seeing Kit Harrington listed though.  Are there two shows about this time frame?  Is one Gunpowder and the other one G,T&P?  I can get G,T&P but not Gunpowder it seems.  If this is not the same show does anyone know if it is worth my time?  SOooo many questions....AAArrrrgghhhhh  boom!
 

[Sir_Theo]

So, intrigued by your discussion but a little confused.  Over here in the States I can find something called Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.  I am not seeing Kit Harrington listed though.  Are there two shows about this time frame?  Is one Gunpowder and the other one G,T&P?  I can get G,T&P but not Gunpowder it seems.  If this is not the same show does anyone know if it is worth my time?  SOooo many questions....AAArrrrgghhhhh  boom!
 

Different shows in afraid. I've never seen GT&P but looking at IMDB I'm quite interested in watching it! From 2004 Written by Jimmy McGovern and has a cast including Michael Fassbender, Robert Carlyle And Kevin McKidd.