SPQR (So …. plot, quick reminder)
It’s 43AD and the Emperor Claudius has gathered a mighty army to invade Kent. To start with anyway. We will spend the next hour and a bit meeting the woad-caked locals and their rather better dressed but brutally ambitious Roman conquerors. Think of them as very determined Apprentice candidates, trampling on some much poorer people, who are also really into horoscopes.
Unleash hell
A wild-eyed man known initially as the Outcast (The Killing’s Nikolaj Lie Kaas) has a terrible dream about a dove being eaten by an eagle and flees to his cave to scrawl mystic symbols on its walls. He is a fearful, superstitious Celt and he knows trouble is coming. It is only fitting that the first words uttered in this TV epic are “Oh shit,” because we need to know from the off that it’s Jez “F-ing” Butterworth holding the pen and these characters won’t be addressing each other in schoolboy Latin.
Cut to the rain-soaked Roman encampment in Gaul where the be-helmeted troops prepare to sail for England and David Morrissey, as real-life general Aulus Plautius, is interrogating four deserters. When they express fear at crossing the sea to a land ruled by demons who feast on human flesh, Aulus darts back a prissy: “That sounds scary.” Be sure he has the biggest balls of any Roman and he means to bring our rainy little lump of rock under Claudius’s rule even if it is overrun with “fucking giant squid”. Pardoned deserter Antonius (Aaron Pierre) stabs the other three to death to prove his worth and joins the Roman fleet as they sale west.
Hurdy Gurdy Man
Anyone else not expecting Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man to be the theme tune here? A quick look at the lyrics does offer some explanation.
Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity
The first two lines could definitely be applied to the British Isles when the Romans land. The Celts are superstitious, divided and afraid, but the Druids are seen here as a deeply sinister bunch, all bulging eyes and bony-fingered curse-bestowing. Mackenzie Crook, playing Veran, the leader of this particular sect, is an animate cadaver with sunken, boggling eyes and scathed skin. In the best possible way, he is made for this part.
Before we’re properly acquainted with the ancient mystics of old Albion, we meet Cait (Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who was so brilliant in The Enfield Haunting). Cait is first seen in happy scenes with her family, about to undergo a solstice ceremony to make the transition from girl to woman. Even the casual observer will have understood this domestic idyll needs smashing in order to trigger her journey through series one. Her eventual pairing with the Outcast – a scan of the cast list tells us his name is Divis, I suppose because he is some self-appointed diviner of future events – reminds me of Arya Stark and the Hound from Game of Thrones. Not that anyone will be drawing those sorts of comparisons, no.
‘General consensus is, we’ve just invaded hell’
Kerra (Kelly Reilly) is as good with a bow as any muscle-bound man warrior but her father, the king of their tribe, won’t let her join in even though she saved his life. Feminists really did have a long way to go back then. And yet … the sight of Zoë Wanamaker (as Queen Antedia) charging towards a battle in a chariot is always a welcome one and she kicks off her part in things nicely with a resolute, “I shit on the soles of your dead,” before laying waste to half of Kerra’s unsuspecting tribe.
I will forgive this series everything if we get to see the Queen and the rival upstart princess facing off in the future. Or perhaps even joining forces against the invaders. “General consensus is, we’ve just invaded hell,” says Aulus, grinning at his prefectus (Hugo Speer). But you can tell by the twitch of his mouth that he is deeply uncomfortable with all the mystic symbolism among the foliage.
When Antonius returns to camp having been abducted by Veran’s minions, he is spouting someone else’s warning. The Romans must sacrifice a stag to the Druid gods or face the consequences. Aulus’ response is pretty final. He writes it on papyrus, seals it, stuffs it in Antonius’s mouth and has him buried alive. “Trees and nightmares”, indeed.
Is it the new Game of Thrones? Too early to say but I’m hoping for a bit more humour as the series goes on. What do you think?
Notes from the end of the woad
- The landscape is phallic and wild, rock promontories thrust towards the sky like fingers or, you know, other long pointy things. But Butterworth only provides one shag for Thrones-addicted viewers expecting skin. This bodes well.
- “The sun will not rise tomorrow,” is Divis’s warning to the scornful Druids. Worst thing you can say to an uncivilised innocent back then – big fiery ball in sky not come back. Still, they don’t seem bothered.
- The SPQR standard is planted in a pile of burning bodies by Aulus. “Behold, gods of Britannia. I am Rome,” he says with gravity. “And where I walk is Rome.” I hope any opportunity for Morrissey’s gruff grandstanding is taken up by the writers. It’s terrific.
- When Divis describes Rome as a “godforsaken shithole”, he little realises the resonance this will have 2,000 years in the future.
- I wonder how the story of the two headless chickens in the Cairo market ends. Will we ever know?
