Posts tagged: Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E11 “Episode 11” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writer: Guy Burt
Director: Marek Losey

Essential Plot Points:

• Rheda returns to Herot and orders Slean to be locked up for his acts of betrayal.
• Word is sent to allied clans that Herot needs help fighting against the Bregan and Wulfing army. None of them, however, will be able to get to Herot in time (the Banning will presumably have to wait for Lagathorn to sober up).
• Beowulf convinces Rheda he should ride to Varni and ask Rate for their help. Rheda doesn’t think Rate will agree because of the little matter of her exiling him. Beowulf thinks it’s worth a try because otherwise he’ll have nothing to do this week.
• Varr accompanies Beowulf with a secret message from Rheda for Rate.
• Slean convinces Huskarla commander Gil to free him so he can lead the Huskarla in a futile defence against the Bregan-Wulfing army at Draca bridge. Maybe they can delay the invaders long enough for help to reach Herot.
• The Huskarla defend the bridge valiantly thanks to Slean’s inspiring leadership but the invaders are too strong in number.
• Just before their final suicidal attempt to defend the bridge Gil knocks Slean unconscious and orders Vashka and Brinni to take him back to Herot. Gil believes Slean will one day make a great Thane so it would be a shame for him to die here.
• Rheda doesn’t agree and seems mightily miffed Slean didn’t have the decency to die at the bridge to salvage his reputation.

• When Varr and Beowulf arrive at Varni Abrecan’s man is already there trying to make a Bregan-Varni alliance. Rate says he’ll support whoever wins.
• Varr, after a pointless ceremonial fight in which he unconvincingly kills his arsey half-brother, gives Rate the message from Rheda.
• Rate burns the message (we’ll presumably learn what it said next week) and Varr has to stay in Varni to look after his dead half-brother’s family. There is clearly more going on here than Varr is telling Beowulf.
• Beowulf plods back to Herot looking like a sulky panda because yet again he got lumbered with the duller of the week’s two plots.
• After following her pet mudborn to the abandoned Giant city, Elvina encounters Red Tongue who asks her to join him.

Review:

Well, it’s not quite Helm’s Deep – more Helm’s Paddling Pool – but the defence of Draca Bridge feels nearer to the epic fantasy vibe that Beowulf has been striving for since the pilot. Conceptually, it’s more The 300 – the plucky few taking on a much greater army – but from the first shot of the two statues holding up the bridge the show is clearly riffing off from Jackson’s Middle-earth rather than Snyder’s pixel-painted ancient Greece.

And when the episode is concentrating on Slean and his men desperately trying to the right thing and save Herot it’s hugely entertaining. Hey, who doesn’t like to see a giant dog being crowd-surfed over the side of a bridge? Slean proves to be an effective and inspiring leader (and, yes we’re convinced that Slean was ready to die, and this wasn’t just a big PR exercise)  and the series of mini-skirmishes are surprisingly convincing and avoid becoming repetitive.

Sadly, the show’s called Beowulf, and it will keep cutting back to the boring lug. At least this week he’s not wandering around a forest, but he is almost completely redundant. Since his only useful plot function is to tell Rheda that Rate isn’t going to help, this whole B-plot could have been given to Varr and some anonymous Herot extra.

You’d assume that the show’s writers have simply given up trying to make their hero interesting, but the end of the episode, with the Wulfing leader’s monologue about killing Beowulf in revenge for the death of his brother, suggests that they think the audience still has an investment in the character. Sorry, but no. We all pulled our money out of Beowulf Inc and bought shares in Slean PLC weeks back.

Because you do care about Slean. You cheer for him when the spurs his men on. Your heart goes out to him when Rheda rejects him as her son and heir. And you can understand why he’s always got a strop on when the flashbacks reveal what a total and utter git his dad was. Kela might for the moment be wondering if she backed the wrong horse but we’d advise her to stick with Slean because Gil was right: he does have the makings of a great Thane.

Elsewhere, Varr has an unconvincing scrap in a camp site, Red Tongue tries to tempt Elvina and Breca gets four lines. The letter Rheda gave to Varr to give Rate will clearly come into play next week and it’s intriguing to ponder what offer she made. We don’t believe for a minute Rate has just dismissed it out of hand, but we do believe she wouldn’t let Beowulf in on her plans.

The Good:

• Lots of great, inspiring speeches.
• The defence of Draca Bridge scenes may have been The 300-lite (about 286-lite as far as we could tell) but they were full of some great action sequences.

• They way the Huskarle shoved the Wulfing dog over the edge of the bridge was one of the top moments. Much more fun the usual poke-a-sword-in-it solution.
• Ed Speleers was especially good as Slean again.

• Gil knocking out Slean to save him from being killed – we definitely did not see that coming, but dramatically, it works for us.
• Vashka managed to tag along of a field trip and end not accidentally kill or injure a colleague.
• The final voiceover from the Wulfing leader gave the episode a chilling closing scene.

The Bad:

• So Varni is basically one of the crappier fields at the Glastonbury festival? Considering the Varnis’ elaborate hair and costumes we were expecting the place to look a bit less grubby. This truly did have the feel of “end of season budgetary concerns”.

• Varr’s fight with his half-brother was, frankly, rubbish: short and unconvincing. The bit when Varr was supposed to be throwing sand in his half-brother’s face looked like he was pouring it down his trouser leg.
• Beowulf was relegated to the B-plot yet again.
• It would have been nice to see Vashka and Brinni stand up for Slean when Rheda laid into him. Rheda, who seemed so politically shrewd at the start of the series, now seems to be being ruled by her heart.

• The wet Wulfing teenager may have gone for a Braveheart makeover but he still looks about as hard as a Teletubby.

And The Random:

• Erm… what was this guy doing exactly? He appeared to be taking firewood from one basket and putting it in the next basket using an implement specially designed to make the task more complicated than just doing it by hand.

• Did you spot the amount of spittle flying out of Gil’s mouth during his last rousing rallying cry? We bet the camera man had to wipe his lens after that one.
• We’re reliably informed by out North Eastern correspondent that our North Eatern correspondent got it wrong last week and the beach the Wulfings arrived at is actually Blast Beach, Seaham. This location was also used in Alien 3. But not as a beach.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E10 “Episode 10” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writer: Jack Lothian
Director: Cilla Ware

Essential Plot Points:

• Beowulf tells Rheda of Abrecan’s plan to march his fishy army on Herot.
• Rheda doesn’t believe it but rides off – alone – to confront Abrecan in Bregan.
• Abrecan makes a feeble pretence to act the innocent but soon he has Rheda locked up and he’s demanding she sign over the Jarlship to him in return for her life.
• Rheda not-so-politelty declines, but just as Abrecan is about to kill her, his wife, Saray, helps Rheda escape.
• Abrecan files for divorce… by sticking a sword through Saray.
• (But she’s only playing dead, it seems.)
• Abrecan’s not too worried because he’s made a pact with the Wulfings, who will aid the Breganites in their attack on Herot.
• The Huskarla train the civilians of Herot how to fight (apart from the truculent smelters who get trained by Breca).
• Bewoulf is once again consigned to the B-plot, which once again finds him wandering around the woods waving his sword about.
• The excuse this time is that the smelters’s troll has had a strop because nobody fed it, and so scarpered off into the forest, accidentally killing an extra on the way.
• Beowulf and Huskarla commander Gil are all for some revengey trollslaying but the Smelters want him back alive, so Vishka tags along like Jiminy Cricket to appeal to the mudborn-hating warriors’  better natures. And to carry the salt lick.
• Vishka, amazingly, succeeds and Beowulf – looking slightly embarrassed – brings the toll back to Herot.
• Also back in Herot is Elvina… and to Beowulf’s shock he learns that Slean knew she was a skinshifter all along.
• Beowulf grudgingly agrees not to reveal this secret but warns Slean that the people of Herot will turn on him if they ever find out.

Review:

There’s a definite feel of a series gearing up for a climax here as various plot start to come together; some less elegantly than others, admittedly, but at least there’s some tangible urgency, energy and tension that was largely lacking from the listless early episodes. On the other hand, the episode would have fared a lot better if one dodgy decision made in the opening moments didn’t still have you distracted by its monumental stupidity at the end of the episode: why did Rheda ride to Herot alone?

Oh, sure, there’s some throwaway line about people being needed to defend Herot (but clearly not needed so much that three of them can’t be spared for a game of hunt the troll). This explanation is, however, bobbins. Beowulf, as Reeve, should have hopped straight on a horse to obstinately follow Rheda, no matter how much she objected. And he should have demanded three Huskarla come with him. Because no “honour guard” would ever let its leader ride off on their own like that. Regardless of wether the rumours Rheda’s heard  about Bregan are true, we’ve been told there are all kinds of other dangers out the beyond the fence… wall. If Varr hadn’t been off tending his bonsai trees or whatever he was up to, he would never have let Rheda get away with it.

But the usually politically astute Rheda appeared to have had a lobotomy between episodes. When she gets to Bregan, she see a once-trusted advisor nailed to a wall after which Abrecan’s wife Saray, urgently whispers, “Run!” into her ear, so what doesn she do? She practically offers herself up for sacrifice! By the time Abrecan delivers he 200th “I would make a better Jarl than you!” speech of the season you’re beginning to wonder if he might not be right.

He certainly has little competition from Beowulf who spends another episode stomping around B-Plot Woods. If defending Herot was such an issue, how come the place can spare its Reeve and the commander of its army, to spend the afternoon hunting a troll that, “Might kill again”? To be honest, Vishka’s argument that they need the beast back because it’s a valuable work horse make more sense, but both Boewulf and Gil flatly state they intend to kill it which would be a terrible waste of man hours.

In the end, they don’t kill it. Beowulf has a change of heart. You never know, he may even be likeable by the end of the season.

At the moment, although he’s lied and cheated and betrayed his own mother, Slean is the most competent guy in the show and by far the most interesting. Abrecan says he’s been taught a lesson that a good man and a good leader are not necessarily the same thing and Slean shows signs that he could become the embodiment of this wisdom. He’s the one spurring his people on with motivational speeches. He’s the one that could create harmony between mudborn and humans. Not for altruistic reasons, mind – just because be fancies one).

Yeah, what a leftfield revelation that was: Slean has known Elvina was a skinshifter all along. That’s probably more of a twist her being a skinshifter. It certainly makes you reassess what you think you know about Slean. It does make you worry about what might happen when the ruthless Kela finds out, though.

The training scenes were entertaining as Lila’s “army of barmaids” (and others) are taught how to fight the Huskarla way while Breca trains the smelters how to make their fighting as dirty as their undies. Training montages are a cliché you never mind being subjected to again, as they usually work. And some of Breca’s advice was amusing: “Let them come at you. If you’re running at them you’re not thinking. And if you’re not thinking, bad things happen.”

The mystery surround Saray, meanwhile, is actually deepening. She’s an assassin who fell in love with her target, who then urged him to come out of the shadows and seize power but who now thinks he’s gone too far in pursuit of that power. It’s certainly great to see her kick ass with a rake when she comes to Rheda aid – but why? Her motivations are murky. Plus, she’s not dead when she should be. Either Abrecan somehow missed anything vital with that sword (which is possible because in TV land fatal wounds need not be fatal if it suits the plot), or she’s some kind of mudborn too, with special recuperative powers. There certainly didn’t seem to be much blood but initially we just put that down to “pre-watershed”. Maybe there’s something more to it?

The Good:

• Saray going all Brienne of Tarth with a rake.
• Breca going all the Hound with a spade.
• It was a good week for gardening tools  wasn’t it?
• The training montage; especially Breca’s sage advice to the smelters (“This is the perfect weapon. And it won’t just kill a man, it’ll bury him too.”)
• The hungry troll’s tantrum. Always let the wookiee win and always feed a troll on time.
• The troll slurping his salt lick like it’s an ice lolly – this was so cute.
• Slean telling Kela, “Just don’t poison anyone.” We think he actually cracked a joke!
• The revelation that Slean knew that Elvina was a mudborn all along, and didn’t care. He’s fast becoming the most sympathetic character on the show.

• Abrecan showing his disdain for his sister’s rule by using her “pillar of laws” as firewood.
• Insult of the week…

The Bad:

• Rheda riding off the Bregan on her own. Even if she didn’t believe the rumours, and even if people were needed to defend Herot, what regime would let its leads just ride off on their own like that?
• Is there any point in mentioning what a dull hero Beowulf is yet again? Once again, all he gets to do is play Vikings down the woods.
• Why did Gil, the leaser of Huskarla, accompany Beowulf on the troll hunt? Surely he has better things to? He’s totally superfluous anyway, and vanishes for much of the hunt.
• Why doesn’t Saray kill Abrecan when she has the chance?
• Why is Elvina acting like a zombie?
• Why does Slean look only look vaguely puzzled and suspicious when Elvina reappears, not happy?
• Why doesn’t Rheda run when she’s warned?
• Does Abrecan even need to kill Rheda?
• There wasn’t enough of the fight training montage.
• The shot of the Wulfing ships arriving is underwhelming.

And The Random:

• The writer of this episode, Jack Lothian, was the main writer on Sky’s better-than-you-might-remember Sinbad series.  He has also written 16 episodes of Doc Martin, and the TV movie Harry Price: Ghost Hunter that aired last Christmas.
• Cilla Ware, meanwhile, directed nine episodes of Primeval.

• Poor Harken. When he said he wanted to be a pin-up this wasn’t quite what he had in mind.

• Did anybody else think the mudborn-hugging smelter lady was channeling the Rancor keeper from Return Of The Jedi?
• We’re reliably informed that the Wulfings are landing at Marsden Bay in South Shields with its lighthouse digitally removed.
• Is Abrecan’s speech (“ I see a land… where the mudborn roam freely”) supposed to be a twisted inversion of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream?” speech, where the dream is actually one of racial hatred?

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E09 “Episode 9” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writer: James Dormer
Director: Cilla Ware

Essential Plot Points:

• The Warig prophet – a skinshifter called Red Tongue, aka Razzak – visits Herot undercover in human form to confirm the place is weak and ready to be attacked (sadly Abrecan doesn’t turn up with Cod’s Army to say, “Oi, wait in queue, mate!”)
• Elvina takes one of her regular trips to feed the mudborn she’s befriended and Beowulf follows her.
• Beowulf is horrified when he realises what she’s up to because – shocker – he’s a racist! Or speciesist! Or whatever. Warigs killed his parents and now, for him, all mudborns are pretty much the same: subhuman beasts that deserve to die.
• Razzak’s Warigs capture Elvina, Beowulf and Elvina’s pet mudborn. But Elvina, by a ruse, frees the mudborn.
• Razzak reveals himself to be a skinshifter.
• Razzak offers Beowulf to the tribe of Warigs whose burial site he defiled a few episodes back; they can have him as a sacrifice in return for their help in attacking Herot.
• Elvina helps Beowulf to escape but only by revealing herself to be a skinshifter too!
• Beowulf isn’t very grateful. He banishes her from Herot.
• He’s in a banishing mood at the moment, isn’t he? Last week’s banishee, Breca, returns to Herot with news of Bregan’s impending invasion.
• Meanwhile, Rheda does politicking with Lagrathorn and it’s actually interesting to watch. The result: he agrees to come to Herot’s aid in time of military need if Rheda agrees not to impose her Shieldlands-wide laws on Banning.
• Slean moves into the same quarters as Kela, but not the same bed. It’s still quite sweet.
• Herot’s female blacksmiths make the Huskarla look like fools and convince their commander that civilians can be trained to fight.

Review:

How bizarre: suddenly Beowulf becomes current affairs. With the news about Britain’s referendum on whether to stay in the European Economic  Union or not a hot topic at the moment, Return To The Shieldlands offers it own spin. Rheda becomes an Olde English Angela Merkel struggling to bind the Thanes into a united block while Lagrathorn rails against her common laws and negotiates a special deal for the Banning; not quite in, not quite out. Then Rheda archly warns that she can change the rules when it suits her. Let’s hope Michael Gove isn’t watching. He’d have a heart attack.

This was a welcome step forward for the show: the politicking, the dialogue and the characters all seemed a great deal richer this week. There were lots of little character moments and bits of dialogue that weren’t just in service to the plot – they were actually fun and made the relationships feel more full bodied. Take Lagrathorn, for example. He comes in blustering like normal, but Rheda just takes the piss out of him. And instead of just blustering more, he calms down and they have a proper exchange of views. Then Lagrathorn identifies he captured Warig, and actually makes an intelligent observation (albeit with his usual lack of tact): “What are you doing here you ugly runt? And why aren’t you scared?” Then he brokers the deal about the laws. Suddenly he’s not just shouty man who’s a pain in Rheda’s side; you can see why he might actually be a leader (who, like David Cameron, you wish was someone else’s leader).

Slean, who’s been the show’s MVP for the past couple of weeks, is more in the background this episode but he still has a couple of good scenes and his edgy relationship with the ambitious Keela remains one of the most compelling plotlines. You kinda want Kela and Slean to become a power couple while at the same time sacred of what they might achieve. And do to each other.

Lila’s also an immense amount of fun in just a couple of scenes where she makes men look like idiots. The scene in which she belittle the Huskarla commander is great fun (as opposed to the one where she belittles Beowulf’s architectural skills which is just baffling) though you have to wonder how such a wimp ever got into a position of power.

The episode’s other great moment the WTF?! reveal that Elvina is a shapeshifter. Be honest, you – like us – were expecting Grendel (if that’s indeed who Elvina’s pet mudborn turns out to be) to swoop in and save Beowulf from the burning cross. But no, Elvina reveals her true self and rescues the big lunk. This is a seriously cool, game-changing development.

Sadly it does not reflect well on the show’s star. We’ve moaned before about the show’s handling of Beowulf but that’s usually because he’s underused. And, yes, once again he’s a punch bag, beaten up by a Warig. But that’s not the main problem here. Instead he turns out to be a raving racist. Or speciesist. Or whatever the term is. He hates mudborns. He’s blind the nuances of good mudborn or bad mudborn. And so when the woman who saves his proves to be a mudborn, he doesn’t  rethink his opinions – he just banishes her.

Now, to be fair, there is a flashback that tries to contextualise this. Also, to be fair, it’s a rubbish flashback that doesn’t contextualise this. It’s so pointless, they may as well have had Beowulf saying, “Some of my best friends are mudborns but…”

There’s nothing wrong with flawed heroes. Or heroes with issues. Or heroes with a dark side. The problem here is that we know so little of Beowulf’s past or personality, and we’ve seen weeks of him being a bit crap at fighting, that all we know are the flaws not the hero. He’s a blinkered racist who hasn’t proven much good at anything else apart from nicking his step-brother’s woman.

Come on, Beowulf writers. This episode proves you can up your game in other areas. Please address the Beowulf problem!

The Good:

• Kela’s celtic-tinged singing as she washes by the river adds a pleasing touch of folk tale mysticism to the show.
• “Where’ve you been?” “Washing. You should try it sometime.”
  “Put me down or I will cause you pain.” Both of these lovely, sweet playful little exchanges help make Elvina and Beowulf’s relationship far more believable than previously.
• “I could ask Varr to find some entertainment for you.” “Uh, no. His idea of entertainment is a lecture on the economics of the iron trade.” “He gave me the same one.” Slean and Kela also seem like a more natural couple this week.

• The camaraderie between the troll and the captured Warig –  achieved with no (comprehensible) dialogue – works really well. The show is actually in danger of making the audience feel more sympathy for its non-human cast.
• We finally get to meet Red Tongue and he’s not some pompous prophet but some dodgy geezer. Nice twist.
• Rheda as Angela Merkel, Lagrathorn as a ranting David Cameron. Especially the moment when Lagrathorn get what he wants – freedom from the laws for the Banning – only for Rheda to retort, “I can always have another one made.”
• “Agrathorn. Breath. You’re going red.” Even Rheda’s allowed to be funny this week.
• “So you’re going to tell Rheda that her little brother has betrayed her? Good luck with that.”
  “The more I know you the more I understand why your wife beats you with that copper pot.” Breca has recovered some of his laconic with from the the first couple of episodes.
• Kela offering to help Slean wash the dead soldier’s body. In fact, the whole of idea of a leader having to wash the bodies of their fallen to remind them of the price they’ve paid is an intriguing one. Wonder where the writers lifted it from?

• The way Lila deals with the Huskarla commander is very amusing, even if the commander is so wet you wonder how he got the job.
• Razzak: “He wants to know if you have anything to say.” Beowulf: “Only that if he breaths on me any longer he wan’t have any use for that spear.” Warig hits Beowulf savagely. Razzak: “He understands.” Beowulf: “Yeah I got that.” Beowulf as the Olde English Richard Sharpe we wish he was more often.
• Kela’s sad face when it looks like Slean is moving in then makes it clear he’s just sleeping on the sofa.

The Bad:

• Beowulf gets beaten up again. This time by a Warig.

• Beowulf’s flashback is so pathetic you have zero sympathy for his being so rampantly anti-mudborn.

• Breca normally gets away with his PVC gimp suit because he has other layers on top of it but here’s he simply looks like he’s wandering around in kinky underwear.
• If Breca thinks his news about Bregan is so important why insist of only telling Rheda?
• Razzak convinces the burial ground Warigs to go from, “No we won’t help you!” to, “Yay, let’s march on Herot!” with suspicious ease.
• Also, this is the second time in three weeks that an evil leader has secretly killed a close but expendable follower for political gain; Abrecan bumped off Vlade and here Razzak kills a Warig commander. The two incidents feel a little too similar.
• Why the hell do the Warigs consider Razzak a prophet? All he does is kill them, shout at them and order them about. Even when he’s giving a motivational speech he does so in his human form which surely sends out all the wrong messages.

And The Random:

• Did you spot the foreshadowing in the first Beowulf/Elvina scene? “There’s no taming you, is there?… Then I’ll take you as you are,” says Beowulf. “You don’t know who I am,” says Elvina.” “I will,” replies Beowulf. Thus proving how full of shit he is.

• We’re not exactly sure where Lila was going with the line, “I’m not an expert on fortification, but I imagine you’ll need gates as well as a wall.” Surely Beowulf’s plans don’t really involve a defensive wall with no way in or out?
• Kela tells Slean, “I promise you you’ll be safe,” when trying to convince him to share the same bedchamber as her, which suggests that (as we half-jokingly pointed out last week) Slean really is concerned about that whole, “I killed my sister,” stuff.

• Anybody else think, “Oooh, Time Bandits!” as this point. No? Just us then.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E06 “Episode 6” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writers: Guy Burt
Director: Colin Teague

Essential Plot Points:

• A troll attacks the miner, Greff – an odd occurrence as the miners usually keep the trolls docile by leaving them salt to feed on (if they can’t get salt the easy way they’ll get it from human blood).
• Greff apparently kills the troll, and Rheda worries that when the other trolls find out they may take revenge. So she sends Beowulf to investigate. Breca tags along to add some quippage.
• Unfortunately the troll wasn’t as dead as  Greff made out. Cue another troll attack which Breca – somewhat surprisingly (and accidentally) – deals with; the troll falls down a mine shaft.
• Investigating further, Beowulf discovers that someone has been deliberately replacing the salt with sand. The same has happened back at the stores in Herot. The salt comes from Bregan, where Rheda’s brother is Thane. Is someone there a traitor?
• Kela arrives in Herot (armed with a secret knife hidden in a doll) and briefly meets her husband-to-be, Slean.
• However, when she tells Rheda of the warig prophet who’s stirring the warig into action, Rheda dispatches Slean to Bregan so warn Abrecan.
• But Slean learns that Beowulf and Elvina have become an item while on their trip to the Mere. He’s furious and blames his mother for engineering the relationship.
• So Slean arrives in Bregan in a frame of mind that makes him easy for Abrecan to manipulate. Abrecan and Slean hatch a plot to make Abrecan Jarl and Slean Thane of Herot; but Slean insists that his mother is not harmed in the coup.
• Wulfing raiders attack Bregan, and do some serious damage (including stabbing Abrecan, but not fatally) before being repelled. They decide to attack Herot next, using their big CG dog this time.
• Slean tells Abrecan not to light the beacons that will warn Herot there’s danger on the way. If the Raiders do significant harm to Herot it will discredit his mother and Beowulf.
• Meanwhile, Elvina travels through some nicely-lit forests with a picnic for the mutant mud born that captured her in episode one.

Review:

Y’know, we so nearly gave this action-packed episode an extra half star, but the show’s criminal treatment of its star – its eponymous star – means we have to be cruel to be kind. Please, please, please Beowulf writers, STOP MAKING BEOWULF LOOK STUFF A WUSS. Last week he was bested by a guy who was old enough to be his granddad, and this week Slean is beating him in a fight until Varr breaks things up and then he gets knocked unconscious by a troll and leaves Breca to save the day.

It’s not like he does anything else interesting the rest of the time. He’s currently coming across like a bit-parter in his own show. It’s great to have some rampaging trolls livening things up, and the various action/effects scenes involving the CG beasts are great. But the comedy stuff with the guy-linered miners (they looked like they’d wandered in from an ancient Adam And The Ants pop vid) amounted to little more than filler. And when the big revelation in a plot line is, “We need more salt!” you can’t help feeling that things have taken a worrying turn for the mundane.

Elsewhere, though, the episode’s on much better form. Slean is currently a much more interesting character and the writers are taking full advantage of him and Edward Speleers’ wonderfully sulky face. His plotting scenes with Uncle Abrecan are setting things up nicely for future intrigue and skulduggery. Saray, Abrecan’s better half, immediately piques your interest too. She seems to really enjoy her stabbing session. A little too much. And though she keeps getting sent out of the room whenever the men need to talk, we reckon there may be a little bit of the Lady Macbeth to her.

Another woman to keep your eye on is Kela. After that enigmatic smile at the end of last episode, here we see she armed with a lethal doll. Who’s she planning to stab with that. She also seems to take an instant shine to Brinni; despite Vashka’s protestations that she hates the idea of being in love you have to assume she’s not going to be happy if Kela start having a sly affair with the Huskarla behind Slean’s back.

And what’s Elvina up to with her picnics for the mud born? Is there a whole Stockholm syndrome situation going on after it captured her in episode one?

All this, plus each new director is finding new ways of making the main hall set at Herot look amazing.

But Beowulf himself seriously needs some scripting TLC. And a partner who can deliver a joke.

The Good:

• Slean has a great right hook on him. It knocks Bewoulf right out of his hut and into the street. Very impressive.
• It’s great to see Varr and Breca get some action (though it’s a bit of a shame that in both cases it’s at Beowulf’s expense).
• Breca: “I don’t think you killed it enough.”

• It might be schoolboy humour but we did like the way Greff’s brother proudly announced that they distilled the alcohol from a vegetable that looked like “horse’s tackle”.
• The effects were pretty decent, especially the burning troll.
• Varr: “Is it strictly necessary for a groom to be present at a wedding? I can imagine things would be a lot simpler without him.” From the Next Week preview it looks like Varr is going to have a decent-sized role for a change. Let’s hope he doesn’t lose his droll wit.
• We honestly don’t know if Greff running into the camp shouting “TROLLS!!!!” like something out of Monty Python is a great or awful moment but it amused us much so it’s going in the Good section.

• Slean has an unfeasibly wide range of grumpy faces throughout the episode but this was the best. Great shot.
• The final battle scene was pretty good too, directed with a sense of urgency and power that pretty much disguised the lack of blood and the lack of raiders. There was still a little bit a “Sealed Knot slumming it as Vikings” vibe but overall it was an exciting sequence. And we got another expression to savour from Slean…

The Bad:

• Beowulf is getting beaten up by everybody! Why has our hero become such a wuss?
• The family tiff at the smithy was cringingly stilted.
• The campfire camaraderie scene with the miners, Beowulf and Breca was pretty awful too. Breca’s anecdote was hardly the stuff of legend… Maybe it’s the way he tells ’em (like he’s learning his lines phonetically because he doesn’t actually speak English).
• Bregan looked a little like Disney’s Viking World area in a theme park.
• There’s something inherently anti-dramatic about salt. The more times they said the word “salt” the more ludicrously mundane it sounded. “We’re going to need more salt,” doesn’t quite have the same clout as “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
• There was an awful lot of padding in the troll storyline; Beowulf felt like he was being fobbed off with the B-plot.

And The Random:

• So Varr was once with the Varni? Maybe his name is a nickname, in that case: he’s a “var” in Herot. It’s not clear if he was born Varni or merely served with them for a while. Either way, this unexpected piece of information about his past is clearly paving the way for something significant in the next few episodes.
• The Wulfing raiders are based on the Wulfings or Wylfings (the name means “wolf clan”) who are a powerful clan in the original Beowulf poem.
• Saray, Abrecan’s other half, is clearly a woman with a shady past, though if she’s as hard and worldly wise as she makes out why does she keep letting Abrecan send her away when the men need to talk?

• It’s amazing how colour coordinated all these Viking clans are, isn’t it? Bregan is obviously situated near a plentiful supply of woad.

• Cliché of the week: in any fight scene that takes place in a historical period before the invention of the fridge a table of fruit must go tumbling. And this was the guy who was later grumbling about their attack being a failure. Maybe if he’d wasted less energy intimidating apples things would have gone better.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E05 “Episode 5” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writers: Guy Burt, Jon Cooksey
Director: Stephen Woolfenden

Essential Plot Points:

• A sandwyrm eats the dowry that Beowulf was taking to Mere. Team Beowulf only just escapes being eaten as well.
• Improvising, they tell the Thane of Mere, Gorrik, that they’ll let him have the dowry when they see his daughter; the one who’ll be marrying Slean as part of the deal Gorrick backing Rheda as Jarl.
• Meanwhile Mere people are being struck down with an sickness (mal de Mere, anybody? Oh, never mind…)
• Gorrik’s elder daughter, Mara, is secretly bonking the Reeve of the Mere, Rowan, and doesn’t want to get married to some idiot in Herot. Then she falls ill too.
• Elvina tries to help the sick. She believes a gland from a sandwyrm is the cure. Beowulf vows to kill a sandwyrm and get the gland.
• Rowan learns that Beowulf has lost the dowry. He tells Gorrik, then uses this as leverage to make Gorrik promise Mara to him instead of Slean.
• Rowan helps Beowulf to kill the sandwyrm, than takes the gland and runs off, telling Beowulf not to return to Mere because Gorrik knows the truth about the Dowry.
• But – would you believe it? – they’ve killed the exact sandwyrm that swallowed the dowry and it’s still undigested in its gut.
• Beowulf takes the dowry to Gorrik, but it’s too late. Mara has died. Luckily Gorrik has another daughter, Kela, and she’s well up for marrying some bloke in a foreign land if it means she never has to eat seafood again.
• Somewhere along the way Gorrik also tells Beowulf that the Warig are preparing for war, egged on by a prophet known as Red Tongue (‘cos he drink human blood).
• Back in Herot, the miners are becoming militant, but Slean puts his little-known blacksmithing skills to use to make sure they get paid and sign an exclusive contract to provide ore to Herot only and not the Varni.
• Pleased with having made his mum proud, Slean also turns down an invitation from Evil Uncle Abrecan (are we sure there’s not a panto villain with that name?) to side with him.

Review:

You say sand worm. We say sandwyrm. Let’s call the whole thing (a Dune rip-)off. Beowulf and some guy dressed in Lawrence of Arabia cosplay even start thumping the sand to attract the thing, just like the mechanical thumpers do Frank Herbert’s famous sci-fi novel. But let’s be generous; let’s call it homage.

Besides, it’s churlish to complain when the sandwyrms help to “spice” up the episode (that’s a gag only those familiar with Dune will get). The sequence with Beowulf, Breca and dodgy-Lawrence on a sandwyrm-hunting trip is a wonderfully silly piece of fantasy telly, and one that owes more to Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad epics that David Lynch’s sci-fi movie.

And at least Beowulf wakes up for the challenge. Otherwise, he spends most of the episode doing a good impression of a sleepwalker. His usual cheeky charisma is almost completely absent; he gets his ass whupped by an OAP in a silly mask; he looks positively pissed off that he has to battle a giant worm; his lies about the dowry are half-arsed; and the prospect that that he could return to Herot without a wife for Slean seems to bother him as much as grey in his beard. Even when he does battle the wyrm, it’s wet old Rowan who delivers the fatal blow to the creature. What kind of a herioc fantasy show lets the wet bad guy get the glory?

The show’s writers really need to concentrate on beefing up Beowulf as a character because he should be more fun to watch than he’s been these last two weeks. Kieran Bew has proven he can be a Viking version of Richard Sharpe when he’s given the material but he’s flailing to make an impression when he’s given nothing to work with.

Overall the Mere plotline is a serviceable enough fluff and nonsense; there are few surprises and the star-crossed lovers are annoying wet but David Bradley is good value as the crusty old thane and Holly Earl makes for a spirited Kela. Initially we did wonder if Slean was going to ask if she’s even been through puberty yet, but amazingly Earl, despite her looks, is 25! No wonder Gorrik says she has an old head on that body. The sandwyrm supper is good fun, Breca has a few funny lines and giant killer worms make good monsters.

Back at Herot Slean has had a personality transplant and actually comes across as a fully-rounded and likeable character. With the miners doing what miners will be doing for centuries afterwards – being militant and making life a pain for politicians (Arthur Scargill would have been proud of the “We’re being robbed” speech) it’s up to Slean to save the day. With Lila proving that her main contribution to the running the smithy was in the accounts department, Slean rolls up his sleeves and lets his Tintin quiff go all droopy with sweat as he produces the metal goods the miners are demanding as payment. It’s all highly unlikely; while other kids would collect scabs or torture goats for a hobby, he’d spend his downtime learning how to forge toasting tongs, or something. Apparently this allowed him to switch off from the demands of duty; more probably he was planning to make a sword to stick in his dad.

Rheda meanwhile, is no Margaret Thatcher and capitulates to the miners’ demands. Slean fears that her liberal politics are making her look weak but for the moment she appears to be showing great man management skills. Emphasis on man. Is that enough to secure her position? Even loyal Varr suggests that giving Slean too many reasons to be pleased with himself could lead to him demanding his mother stand aside. And if he proves worthy enough to make that claim, does she have the right to stand in his way? This is a subtler level of politics that new for this show. It’s almost a shame that Evil Uncle Abrecan will soon be back to make things more black and white again.

The Good:

• The sandwyms were good value.
• The subtle, foreboding introduction of the Red Tongue sub-plot promises exciting things to come.
• Slean is actually a halfway likeable character. His work down the smithy does more to humanise him than anything else so far this season.

• We loved Varr declining to shake Greff’s hand after the miner spat on it to seal the deal. We want to see more of Varr. He’s clearly just Varys from Game Of Thrones after a crash diet and hair transplant but he improves every scene he’s in.

• Breca’s relief that it wasn’t the sandwyrm he ate that cause Mara’s illness was very amusing. In fact, Breac turns out to be a bit of a wimp in the face of illness – he holds a cloth over his mouth later when he goes into the hospital tent. Okay, that may have been because of the smell and not because he’s afraid he’ll catch the lurgy but either way: WIMP! And a nice little character touch.

• There’s another one of those “monster in the distance that nobody comments on” shots that are becoming part of the show’s DNA.

The Bad:

• Rowan is far too wet and wimpy to be the Reeve for someone like Gorrik. His first scene, canoodling with Mara in the dunes, looks faintly ridiculous and how come his Lawrence of Arabia costume is so clean?
• Mara’s pretty vapid too. It’s impossible to give a toss about their relationship.
• Beowulf is an utter plank all episode.
• Though Breca has a few funny moments, there’s still none of the fun casual banter he and Beowulf shared in the first couple of episode.
• Not enough of the sandwyrms!
• The “sandwyrm gland cure” is mighty handy. And it’s pretty obvious all along that they’ll kill the same sandwyrm that ate the dowry and recover it.
• Oh let’s be honest, there are no real surprises in the Mere plot. As soon as Kela starts going on about the importance of the siding with Herot you know she’s going to be the one marrying Slean.

And The Random:

• Okay, so a sandwyrm is like a baby Sarclacc, right? You can see the resemblance and it does live in the sand.

• Greff says he likes it when the smelter talks dirty to him, but it’s she who gives him a dirty look as he walks away. Tongue back in your mouth, woman. You’re supposed to be a grieving widow.
• It may have been mere coincidence, but during the sandyrm supper the music became very reminiscent of certain parts of the Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom soundtrack (the tribal drums of the subterranean Thugs), which, of course, had very similar “exotic” meal scene (“Monkey brains!”).
• Just in case you didn’t recognise him, Gorrik is played by David Bradley who has become a genre megastar late in life with such roles as Filch in the Harry Potter films, William Hartnell (the first Doctor) in An Adventure In Space And Time and Abraham Setrakian in The Strain, amongst many, many others. Sam Hoare, who plays Rowan, also appeared in An Adventure In Space And Time very briefly as classic Doctor Who director Douglas Camfield and was more recently seen in BBC One’s Dickensian as Matthew Pocket. Holly Earl who plays Kela also has a Doctor Who connection – she was Lily in the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas special, “The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe”.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E04 “Episode 4” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writer: Michael A Walker
Director: Julian Holmes

Essential Plot Points:

• Rheda wins the vote to become the new Jarl but only by agreeing to the terms set by the Thane of the Mere; to provide them with weapons and to forge a marriage between Slean and the Thane of Mere’s daughter.
• Thanks to a condition set by the recently-deceased Scorann, Beowulf is made the new Reeve of Herot.
• Abrecan is not happy. Slean is not happy. Nobody except Rheda seems particularly happy. Not even Beowulf, despite his sudden promotion. Maybe the pay’s crap.
• Slean frames Rate as the traitor responsible for the deaths of Scorann and Bayen, and for trying to make sure Rheda never became Jarl. (He does his to have leverage over the real traitor – his Uncle Abrecan.)
• Rate is really not happy.
• Rheda sends Beowulf to Mere with the weapons they bargained for and to fetch the Thane’s daughter, Slean’s bride to be.
• Beowulf travels with Elvina (at Rheda’s command to get her separated from Slean), the Mere emissary and Breca, who has nothing better to do.
• Vishka, the adventure seeking blacksmith, secretly follows them. Or not so secretly because she’s rubbish at things like stalking and hiding.
• Turns out she rubbish at Indiana Jones impressions as well. When she stumbles on a Warig burial ground she nicks an amulet and instantly gets an arrow in the arm.

• Her screams bring Beowulf to the rescue (her new step dad, Breca, seems massively unbothered at the idea of her death).
• Team Beowulf take Vishka to a nearby farm house to tend her wound.
• The farmer is not happy.
• The farmer is really not happy when he learns that a small army of Warigs is after Vishka. You kinda feel his pain. Well, not all his pain. Not the bit where a Warig sticks a knife in his gut. Presumably, if he weren’t dead he’d be extremely unhappy about this.
• There’s an overnight siege. Kinda. The Warigs make sporadic attacks, beat some drums a lot and then mysteriously withdraw. “They’re pulling back! Why?” asks Elvina. We never do get answer. Just more drums.
• Come morning, Beowulf rides with Vishka into the Warig burial ground and burns one of the important wooden  memorial to the ground. The Warigs are so aghast they just stand there looking at the fire while all the heroes escape.
• Beowulf and Elvina snog.
• Team Beowulf reaches the Mere homeland, the Island Of Dune, where unseen by them a sandwyrm tracks them under the sand.

Review:

Before the show was launched, Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands was often described in pre-publicity as a kind of Dark Ages western. Until now the parallels have been pretty strained: Beowulf is a bit like Shane or Eastwood’s Man With No Name (though maybe Man With No Backstory is closer to the truth); the smelters are a bit like ’49ers. It’s got horses…

But with episode four, once the politics is out of the way, this is pure a Western, with homesteaders in peril from the show’s answer to Red Indians. We’re shocked the Warigs didn’t form a circle around the farmhouse and stick feathers in their hair, to be honest

And there are moments when it works: some good action scenes, a fair bit of tension and death. The Warigs looks great. There’s some impressive camerawork and striking imagery.

Unfortunately there’s an awful lot of dull padding and barely nuanced meaningful glances in-between. The Warigs’ actions seem purely driven by the demands of pacing rather than any kind of logic, making them a frustratingly random threat. They’re also eventually defeated with mystifying ease in a resolution that redefines the concept of an anticlimax. Beowulf and Elvina’s relationship goes from amusingly teasing to full-on in one extremely unexciting development. And Breca still hasn’t rediscovered his sense of humour that went AWOL last week. If anything, he’s even more of loathsome dullard. His “pep talk” to Vashka isn’t so much hard love as tactless self-preservation.

Worse of all, Beowulf and co are totally in the wrong here. They turn up and utterly ruin the homesteaders’ lives and don’t seem to give a toss. Beowulf actually seems irritated with Malek for trying to protect his family. If the writers wanted to show Beowulf bring a git, they should have had him fed Vashta to the Warigs, like the Mere guy said. That would have made him seem like hero who can make tough moral decisions. Instead he merely comes across as mean-spirited.

Back at Herlot we have the kind of simplistic politics that make the BBC’s Merlin look like Game Of Thrones. For three episodes the vote for the Jarl has been built up as a major set piece, and here’s it over within minutes with a the handy intervention of a character we’ve never met before (and thank God he’s a good aim or the vote could have gone very differently). Then there was that whole deal with Scorran whispering something to Rate last week… revealed here as a job offer for Beowulf. Blimey, was that really worth the status of a BIG SECRET!?

This show desperately needs to rediscover the little fun moments that helped lift the first couple of episodes. Instead it seems to ploughing an ever more grim and gritty furrow and not doing it with much style. Plus, nobody’s sent the hair, make-up, sets and costume departments the memo about grim and gritty. It’s a bit like watching a Sam Peckinpah direct a pantomime.

The Good:

• The Warigs are impressively scuzzy and scary. And now we know why they wear sunglasses – they’re pupil-less eyes are clearly designed for the dark
• The action scenes are well shot.
• There’s some luminous cinematography and some impressive tracking and crane shots that really show off the production design.

The Bad:

• The siege is dull and the motivations behind the Warigs’ actions are incomprehensible. Maybe that’s the point – they’re mysterious monsters, so who knows how they think? – but it doesn’t make for particularly gripping drama.
• The climax is utterly random and totally anticlimactic. It makes the Warigs looks like idiots for doing nothing and our heroes like idiots for being scared of them for so long.
• And why did the Warigs retreat in the middle of the night?
• The dialogue is lifeless and flat and there are far too many meaningful glances.
• The voting scene underwhelms.
• Vishka, who was shaping up to be an interesting character, turns out to be a stroppy teenager.

And The Random:

• Beowulf mentions tying up the horses in the corral. While this suits the “western” vibe of the episode the word corral wasn’t actually coined until the late 16th century.

• Congratulations to Rheda on her Scarlet Witch cosplay.

• Very good thinking – put the convalescent in the draughtiest room in the Dark Ages. What would be the point in heating that place? The Warigs could have shot their arrows through those gaps!
• Week four an Beowulf finally succumbs to the “silly male haircuts” disease with what looks like a plat with daises woven into it. Only Breca remains untouched by this affliction. He’ll have an afro topiaried into the shape of a pineapple next week, just you see.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E03 “Episode 3” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writer: Guy Burt
Director: Julian Holmes

Essential Plot Points:

• Skinshifter Koll’s wife, Sylvi, goes on trial for knowingly marrying a mudborn.
• Lagrathorn taunts Rheda that she doesn’t have the guts to order an execution.
• But Rheda tricks the evidence she needs from Koll’s step-daughter and sentences Sylvi to death by smelter’s wife (no, really).
• Angered at the news, Koll escapes and goes on a rampage. He’s killed by Abrecan, but in the confusion Sylvi and her daughter escape with Elvina.
• Meanwhile, in the woods, Scorran and Slean are being taken by their captors to some caves where they’re to be handed to a guy named Vlade in exchange for money.
• But Beowulf and Rate save them, killing Vlade (apparently) in the process. Scorran dies too, but not before he’s told Rate that his vote in Thane Factor must go to Rheda. Rate isn’t happy about this, and Scorran whispers some “condition” pertaining to his vote in his brother’s ear, then carks it.
• Slean recognises Vlade and, when back at Herot, confronts Abrecan in secret. He says he knows that Vlade was Abrecan’s man and realises that Abrecan has been orchestrating things behind the scenes so that he can become Jarl without being seen to make a move. He killed Koll partly to stop him from revealing the truth.

Review

If you rate TV in terms of scuffles per hour then Beowulf episode three scored high. On any other scale of measurement, though, it was flailing badly. After a couple of middling episodes that showed some sparks of promise, episode three decided to stamp out any sign of those sparks and go big on all the dull and cringey stuff instead.

So back at base we get possibly the single most unexciting trial in TV history while down the woods we get lots of trudging, some occasional running and blokes growling at each other. There’s even a totally pointless escape and recapture. Admittedly the stunt with the tied-together Slean and Scorran is impressive but it takes the plot nowhere.

Beowulf and Rate banter a bit but it’s hardly sparkling. Beowulf at one point is reduced to providing Rate with punchlines to try to make him sound like a witty, urbane warrior. It doesn’t really work and simply highlights the fact that the episode is seriously lacking in Breca/Beowulf banter, one of the best things in the series up till now.

Oh yeah. Breca. He’s back in Herot being a prat. Okay he’s been a bit of a prat before but an amusing, roguish prat. Here he’s an odious prat, goading Koll with all the wit, charm and sensitivity of Donald Trump. That’s not just a waste of a character, that’s character assassination.

The trial of Koll’s wife, meanwhile, is a weird sideshow when you would have thought the townsfolk would be baying for Koll’s blood more then her’s. It seems like a lot of screen time devoted to something it’s difficult to get excited about, and you can only assume it’s a means to an end: a device to reposition certain characters like Abrecan and Elvina.

There’s such an air of listlessness and boredom about Beowulf this week it’s difficult to believe the show’s only three episodes old and not 33. At this stage it should be all guns blazing trying to dazzle us with reasons why it’s new and different and essential to watch. Instead it feels like so, so many things we’ve seen before, using storytelling techniques that are as old as the poem it’s based on.

Thankfully, the trailer for next week looks a lot more interesting. Because we’re still holding out for some of that promise to be fulfilled.

The Good:

• Although it would be nice to have a few more monsters (because they’re far more interesting than the human adversaries) the way the series uses the monsters in such a matter-of-fact fashion is still one of the best parts of the show. Such as when Beowulf and Rate stumble across a Troll scavenging dead bodies and they don’t bat an eyelid; or their amusement at the brazenness of the cheeky warig. It helps makes this feel like a world where monsters are as commonplace as deers or foxes.
• Good to see Rheda not wimping out and ordering the execution.
• The statues outside the cave were nicely sculpted… oh, okay we’re stretching to find nice things to say already.

The Bad:

• Seemingly endless trudging through woods with an added pointless escape-and-capture scene to really make things dull.
• The most unexciting TV trial ever?
• Lagrathorn is too much of an oaf to make a believable threat.
• Koll’s escape and rampage is laughably poor, with Huskarla seemingly throwing themselves out of his way as he approaches them. Maybe he has really bad BO.
• Rate and Scorran speak in far too middle-class accents to be scary warriors.
• Breca has had a charm by-pass operation between episodes.

And The Random:

• “Where I come from, we have a name for scum like you.” But it’s clearly either not PC enough or not pre-watershed enough to actually be uttered out loud.

• Varr’s hair changes from pointy top knot to a loop between the trial scene the next scene when he arrives just in time to stop Rheda having to use a knife on Lagrathorn to prove that no means no.

• Somebody has clearly tricked this horse with the old “boot polish over the end of the binoculars” gag.

• Why do Beowulf and Rate suddenly decide to have a “Who can run most like a girl?’ competition?
• Oh, and can we be all smug for a moment for being completely right about Abrecan in the first two review? No? Oh, okay then…

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews

Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands S01E01 “Episode 1” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on ITV 1, Sundays
Writer: James Dormer
Director: Jon East

Essential Plot Points:

• As a boy Beowulf proves his heroism by killing a mudborrn troll that killed his dad.
• This impresses Hrothgar, the local thane of Herot, who takes Beowulf under his wing, and raises him like a son.
• But Hrothgar’s real son, Slean, loathes his new foster brother, especially as young Beowulf is clearly shaping up to be the better warrior.
• One day, after Slean insults Beowulf’s dad and the boys get into a fight, Slean’s mum, Rheda, accuses Beowulf of trying to kill Slean.
• Beowulf leaves Herot in self-exile, though Hrothgar tells him he will return when Herot and Slean need him.
• Twenty years later, having picked up a sidekick with a wandering eye called Breca, Beowulf returns to Herot when he hears that Hrothgar is dying. 
• By the time they arrive, Hrothgar is dead and Beowulf gets a chilly reception.
• However, Hrothgar named his wife, Rheda, as his successor, not his son Slean.
• Rheda and Slean refuse to let Beowulf see Hrothgar’s body, but they do let him stay for the wake.
• After which Herot’s Reeve, Bayen, is killed. Beowulf finds him dying and sees a mudborn flee the scene. Everyone else then arrives to discover Beowulf next to the body and so they accuse him of murder.
• Herot’s medicine woman, Elvina (who’s bonking Slean on the sly, by the way) rides out of Herot pursued by a mudborn that was waiting outside the walls (it’s the same one Beowulf believes killed Bayen). But when she’s attacked by a barghest, the pursuing mudborn  (which is of a type no one in Herot has seen before) saves her then takes her to an long-abandoned giants’ city.

• Breca helps Beowulf escape captivity before he’s executed, and they ride off to save Elvina, also finding time to make Slean look like a prat along the way.
• Beowulf and Breca “rescue”  Elvina… not that the mudborn is actually doing anything threatening to her.
• All three return to Herot and Rheda pardons Beowulf.
• But Elvina discovers that Bayen wasn’t killed by mudborn claws; he was stabbed.

Review:

You have to admire ITV’s commitment to fantasy at the moment. After a series of high profiles fantasy flops on UK TV recently – Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, Sinbad, Atlantis, Jekyll And Hyde – you’d have thought that TV execs would run screaming at the mention of the “f” word. The shame is, most of those shows were actually very entertaining (Atlantis being the dishonourable exception); it simply seems that the only kind of fantasy UK audiences want to watch has lots of blood, boobs and f-bombs. “Family fantasy” shows are apparently just a big turn off, or the stuff of minority interest channels only.

The only exception in the recent past has been Merlin, which benefitted from that rare alchemy of a pair of leads who created genuine onscreen magic (and zillions of words of slash fiction). Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands doesn’t look like it wants to be Merlin, though; it truly seems to think that it can be a family-friendly Game Of Thrones, complete with beardy northern-accented heroes; political intrigue; camp, Machiavellian advisors; a rip-off theme tune; and lots of mud. Sure, there are more monsters, but there’s definitely more Westeros than Camelot or Middle-earth in Beowulf’s world-building, though all three have an influence.

It’s a tough trick to pull off and on the evidence of episode one, this adaptation of the great Old English epic poem is going to face an epic struggle. It’s not bad by any means, and delivers a well-made, well-acted, lavish-looking premiere. There’s just not anything particularly special about it. It’s feels familiar. It feels safe. It feels like a show that desperately needs a USP. There’s not much you can imagine creating a buzz in the playgrounds or pubs of Britain.

There are a few surprises. The precredit teaser does a Buffy by inverting expectations; you expect the grown-up warrior not the kid to defeat the monster. The female characters are (by an large) much better written than you’d expect in this kind of action/adventure show (though one still ends up a damsel in distress). And the CG “Grendel” looks like he’s not destined to be the villain of the story. There are some fun lines, and a number of intriguing-looking support characters.

But overall, it’s just a bit bland. Beowulf’s original banishment in the flashbacks has a feel of, “Is that it?” while the political machinations, as well as the antagonism between Slean and Beowulf, are all fairly bog standard dramatic grist. The fact that we don’t learn about what Beowulf’s been up to in the intervening 20 years leaves his character in a bit of a vacuum. And despite some fine-looking production design there’s no one, real visual “wow” moment to savour. CG creatures? Yeah, fine, but they’re hardly a rare delight any more.

There is undeniably a lot of potential. The cast is excellent and they look like they could really develop these characters. The set-up could grow into something more engrossing and multilayered. Shifting allegiances already look likely.

But when a show based on an epic is so decidedly un-epic in its first outing, are the genera audience going to stick around to see if things do improve?

The Good:

• Great sets and production design – love the rococo-celtic fusion.

• Technically, the creatures may not be the greatest CG creations ever seen on TV but they’re animated with a great deal of character. The troll mourning its dead partner and the “Grendel” (if that’s what it is) having to quickly swap its grip when it tries to grab a rope with it mutilated hand help bring these characters to life.
• The Breca/Lila romance is genuinely amusing, especially the way it pisses off the smithy owner’s daughter. “What were you thinking?” wails Vishka. “I wasn’t,” replies Lila with a lewd grin.
• Other support characters are also looking promising, including Rheda’s effete-and-creepy advisor Varr, and her brother Abrecan, who may seem magnanimous now, but we reckon Rheda should keep an eye on him.
• There’s a gratifying attempt to make sure the females aren’t just window dressing, even if it is a tad self-conscious as times.
• Joanne Whalley is very impressive, dominating every scene she’s in.

The Bad:

• It’s all a bit bland and by-the-numbers. There are a few surprises but it needs more.
• The theme tune sounds like the Game Of Thrones theme played on fast-forward.
• The fight scenes are cut stupidly fast.
• There is some really clunky expositional dialogue: “Why did you rescue me?”
• William Hurt looks like he filmed his scenes during his tea breaks on Humans.

• Slean’s ridiculous hair.
• At the end of the episode, when it turns out that Bayen was stabbed, not killed by a mudborn, why isn’t Beowulf immediately under suspicion again?

And The Random:

• Breca is mentioned in the original Beowulf poem. He’s a childhood friend of Beowulf and the two of them have a swimming competition.
• While giants and trolls are in the poem, barghests are not.
• In the poem Beowulf is a hero of the Geats, who comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is being plagued by the monstrous Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands. Grendel’s mum is not happy about this and seeks revenge so Beowulf kills her with a giant’s sword. Some time later Beowulf himself becomes king of the Geats, and this time trouble comes in the form of a dragon. Beowulf eventually kills the dragon but is fatally wounded in the process.
• A few “where do I know her/him from?”s: you may have seen Elliot Cowan (Abrecan) in regular roles in Sky’s Sinbad, Da Vinci’s Demons and The Frankenstein Chronicles; Alex Price (Koll) was the indie ghost Gilbert in Being Human, Francesco in the Doctor Who episode “The Vampires of Venice” and Proteus in Penny Dreadful; Kieran Bew (Beowulf) was Alfonso, Duke of Calabria in eight episodes of Da Vinci’s Demons; and Laura Donnelly (Elvina) was Sarah Kay in The Fall and Jenny Fraser in Outlander. We presume you know who Joanne Whalley and William Hurt are.
• The first sword fight has 34 shots in 22 seconds. That means each shot averages just under two-thirds of a second. That’s getting into Michael Bay territory.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands reviews