Britannia on Sky anyone? (SPOILER ALERT)

[Captain Blood]

Anyone else doing (or done) 'Britannia' on Sky?

I have just inhaled the full nine episode series in three sittings.
Having dedicated eight hours of my life to it, I feel I've earned a little review of it So here goes...

'Britannia' is the latest pretender to Game of Thrones crown. Unfortunately, it doesn't stand comparison. In fact, it's utter tosh - but quite enjoyable for all that.

It really ought to be rather better than it is, given that it's been created and written by a team led by (arguably) Britain's foremost contemporary playwright, Jez Butterworth ('Jerusalem'. 'The Ferryman'), and it also boasts an A-list Brit / Euro acting cast.
 
The cast, it must be said, have a LOT of fun with it. David Morrissey as Aulus Plautius, turns in an overripe and profane pantomime villain performance; Kelly Reilly does that strange thing with her mouth as flame-haired warrior Queen of 'the Cantii'; Zoe Wanamaker camps it brilliantly up as a potty-mouthed rival Celt Queen of 'the Regnii'; and Mackenzie Crook hams it up under an all too obvious skin of latex, as a kind of New Age style Druid arch-mage / stoner. It's all totally over the top, camp, quite silly, and in places gratuitously gruesome. But no less watchable for all that. (Interestingly, not much gratuitous sex or nudity. You'll have to stick to Starz' 'Spartacus' for entertainment of that sort... )

Historically accurate it is not though. The rocky landscape of chasms and mountain fortresses is most definitely not Kent and Sussex (It is, in fact, mainly the Czech republic, with a bit of Wales thrown in for good measure. Plus some pretty naff CGI). The fanciful outfits of the competing British tribes resemble outfits concocted for a school play in lurid football strip colours. Whilst the Romans boast a weird and wonderful assortment of armours, helmets and weapons, which span several centuries worth of historical styles - quite a lot of which looks suspiciously like plastic or fibre glass, and none of which looks quite right.

'Britannia' is, in short, a freewheeling fantasia blessed with deliberately anachronistic, but sometimes quite smart dialogue, very loosely based on the fact of the Roman invasion of Britain in AD43. And that's as historical as it gets. The references to specific legions and a few place names are accurate. Almost nothing else is. Costume, culture, military tactics and equipment, historical characters, landscapes, buildings - none of these things in 'Britannia' have anything at all to do with actual First century AD Britain or Rome.

So once you reconcile yourself to the fact that it's a pure fantasy complete with occult earth magic that seems to actually work, and not a history, it's really quite good.

What I liked best about it: The central performance by young Eleanor Worthington Cox as 'Cait' - the child around whom the main narrative thread revolves. She looks about 12 on screen. She's probably a lot older in real life. But she is a bloody fantastic little actress. I think she would have made an excellent Arya Stark. Possibly even a better Arya Stark, dare I say. (I was absolutely certain that at the very end, this fierce, independent child of destiny, would be revealed to be the future... well, a certain historical figure. You can guess who. But not so far... Well maybe in season 2... I'm sure I'm right...)

What I liked least about it: The hamfisted attempts at injecting black humour. Dire. The clever thing about HBO's Game of Thrones is that it has that leavening of humour sprinkled unexpectedly through the slaughter, sex, intrigue and high drama. But it's always a dry, wry, sardonic kind of wit, that invariably hits just the right spot. Embarrassingly, 'Britannia's' obvious attempts to pull off the same trick fall flat at every turn. The supposed funny bits are just too... sitcom. And not funny.  

Anyway. It's on Sky every week. Or you can binge-watch the whole lot straightaway via the Sky Go app. It's a co-production between Sky and Amazon studios, so no doubt it will be coming soon to Amazon Prime Video too...

[nic-e]

I gave it the old two episode try and after the end of the second episode I decided it was a resounding "Meh", rising to a tolerable "eehhh" in the good bits.

It doesn't have the cash to splash that GOT does and you can really see it. The action is short and choppy, And the regular stable of British TV actors makes it look more like My family BC than a good fantastical series.It feels cheap ,BBC 90's kids show cheap.

There were alot of points that felt tone deaf or flat, and it lacked the rich visuals needed to properly sell the setting (Okay, it's woods and rocks, But COME ON ! if you want your druids to draw me in, don't just make them look like cybergoths that got lost in the woods, make them TERRIFYING AND MAGISTERIAL! Make the roman war machine AWE INSPIRING , not just sort of disgruntled.)

There were alot of times it felt like it wanted to do the game of thrones "oooo is he scheming is he not" style of Machiavellian drama, but you can tell sky want it to have a wider appeal, so every sub plot or conflict is spelled out to the point of being a little but insulting.  I can't count how many times in two episodes the roman general talked about how the men would mutiny, or the soldiers actively planned mutiny within the generals earshot, then drew straws and loudly proclaimed "NOW WE WILL DO A MUTINY!MUTINY IS HAPPENING.EVERYONE BE AWARE THAT THIS IS A SECRET MEETING TO PLAN THE MUTINY"  
The same goes for the celt (Nick from my family) and his Gaul loving wife. WE didn't need that plot spelling out so blatantly, it could have been hidden, we didn't need to know ti was his wife but no, we got the magical exposition fairy to tell us "THE DRUIDS SAID SHE SHOULD HAVE SEX WITH HIM ,AND YOU CAN'T. AND HE'S STRONGER THAN YOU AND YOU FEEL SAD ! "

In short, After two episodes i looked at the state of things and went "eh, I can live with not knowing how this ends."


(I should say that I saw the advert in the cinema and was genuinely excited to see it,IT looked cool and it's an under done fantasy setting IMHO. I agree with you captain about the stupid landscape visuals tho. The druid mountain fortress made of 100 foot high rock spires took me right out of it as i went through my head and remembered every other film i've seen that landscape in and thought about how unlike the wild British landscape it is. Britains landscape is like a boulder that's rolled down a cliff and has gently come to a standstill by the sea, worn flat with rough patches and cracks. Perhaps not as visually striking as sky would like, but sublime in it's own gentle, old sort of way.)

[Captain Blood]

It does get better about halfway through.

[Antonio J Carrasco]

Eleanor Worthington - Not 12, but not by much. She is 16. And I agree that she would have been a fantastic Arya Stark.

[westwaller]

...and we all complained about 'The Last Kingdom'!

I do get irked by the seeming inability of location scouts to find locations that actually look similar to the places they are supposed to be.

[Captain Blood]

...and we all complained about 'The Last Kingdom'!

True. We did. Well, I know I did. But that's because The Last Kingdom was pompously attempting to pass itself off as 'history', whereas I can forgive Britannia almost entirely because it's manifestly fantastical nonsense, and I don't think even the stupidest dumbass watching would really think that's what it was like.

On reflection, I think the biggest issue Britannia has, is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. It's a weird combination of low grade comedy and grand guignol, but neither one thing nor the other. The closest thing I can think of is something like Pirates of the Caribbean. The constant nod and a wink 'we're not taking this too seriously' comedy, rubbing shoulders slightly uneasily with overblown, epic action, plus various relationships between characters which the producers seem to want you to take seriously as drama. It's an odd combination. Of course POTC gets away with it because of the lavish spectacle of the action sequences, plenty of top end CGI magic, gorgeous locations and camerawork, and a brilliantly realised wisecracking character in Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow.
Britannia, alas, has none of these advantages. It's just left somewhere in this queer no man's land.

I do recommend it though. All the above included, overall it's good fun.

[FionaWhite]

Was this the one with the girl punching legionnaires to death and a Roman commander calling for God every now and then?
If so, well, I kinda left it at that. 

[voltan]

if you want your druids to draw me in, don't just make them look like cybergoths that got lost in the woods,

If I get round to watching this I'm going to be really disappointed if the druids aren't dancing to the Thomas the tank engine theme.

[MachinaMandala]

Probably one of the worst things I've ever seen on TV, in all honesty.

A weird disgusting ahistorical mess where the writer is trying to push his sexual fetishes (the nonsensical menage a trois marriage is the prime example) and has no idea about history (black Numidians, brilliant, it's Nubia you're thinking of you ignorant playwriting turd). Don't forget the druids who look like they could come out of the pages of the BMEzine.

And of course the writer (Jez Butterworth) is an arrogant prick about the whole thing: 'When asked by The Guardian if his story will enrage pedants, Butterworth responded that “I actually hope it does.”'

If you're so ideologically bankrupt that you'd do anything to compete with Game of Thrones, then create your own god damn setting instead of taking a stinking turd on British history.

This isn't even going into the terrible camera choices (why does every PoV have a fish eye lens on it that makes you feel like the character is high?), the terrible costume choices (history + fantasy = leather + fur now, as standard) or the terrible writing in general. ALL this stuff happened within the space of the first god damn episode.

At least The Last Kingdom was good TV.

(I don't even consider myself a historical pedant. This was just a combination of bad television, bad writing, bad characters and a shit slurry of lack of historical interest. Also, in case you didn't guess, I give it a 5/100.)

If I get round to watching this I'm going to be really disappointed if the druids aren't dancing to the Thomas the tank engine theme.

I wouldn't put it past it.

[WillieB]

Well, I had high hopes for this one. Never mind, I still have to binge watch the second series of Babylon Berlin. BTW I liked the Last Kingdom.....

[Hammers]

It's on HBO but I have not seen it yet. Having been deeply engrossed in Mary Beard's 'S.P.Q.R' for the last months (a book which is acutely history critical) I expect myself to be rather annoyed with the portrayals of the romans. One can certainly see the benefit of placing dramas like these in an explicitly fictional realm like Westros.

[sakura11]

absolute disgrace and laughable
the portrayal of the Celts is simplistic and seems to be a view of Britain as an advanced civilisation corrupted by European oppression and losing its sovereignty and having to accept immigration and the imposition of law and sovereignty from a bureaucratic European superssuperstate. Where on earth did that ofea come from? Why not actually use reality which having taught Roman  Britain as an A level course is more exciting and has a purpose and educational benefit.
Bigly bad

[nic-e]

absolute disgrace and laughable
the portrayal of the Celts is simplistic and seems to be a view of Britain as an advanced civilisation corrupted by European oppression and losing its sovereignty and having to accept immigration and the imposition of law and sovereignty from a bureaucratic European superssuperstate. Where on earth did that ofea come from? Why not actually use reality which having taught Roman  Britain as an A level course is more exciting and has a purpose and educational benefit.
Bigly bad

That could be their new marketing quote. "Britannia, the nigel farrage of television."

[swiftnick]

Sounds good for a laugh.

[THE CID]

The Last Kingdom was five million times better than this, God only knows what was going on in the writers and directors heads.