The action this week swings between Kattegat and Wessex, and the face-offs between Lagertha/Aslaug and Ragnar/Ecbert that we have all been eagerly anticipating. Kudos to the actors, whose expressions convey a wide range of emotions – doubt, fear, anxiety, understanding, astonishment, suspicion. For a show that glories in sweeping battle scenes, this episode is dialogue-rich […]
Watching History
Like your history on stage or screen? Our team reviews film, theatre and TV drama with a historical slant.
Vikings Season 4: Episode 13, Two Journeys
In this episode Lagertha starts a war, Rollo goes swimming, and Ragnar takes Ivar on a road trip. In Hedeby Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) is plotting with her girlfriends to take back Kattegat, but Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith) and Sigurd (David Lindström), unlike their brothers, have opted to hang out at home and protect the town […]
Vikings Season 4: Episode 12, The Vision
The title of this episode, The Vision, refers to something that happened near the end of the hour, but I’m going to ignore that event because of spoilers. I’ll only note that my favorite part was the waterspout and the breathtaking final scene. Much of the rest of the episode, similar to last week, was […]
Vikings Season 4: Episode 11, The Outsider
The second half of Vikings Season 4 begins right where we left off last spring, with Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) returning to Kattegat after an 8-year absence, and challenging each of his sons: “Who wants to be king?” As it turns out, nobody does. Well, maybe Ivar. But none of them really wants to challenge Ragnar. […]
Vikings: The Story So Far
As Vikings returns to our screens, Patricia Bracewell recaps the first four seasons. The very first episode of the television drama Vikings began in the year 793 A.D. on a corpse-strewn battlefield somewhere in the Eastern Baltic. Two warriors, filthy and bloody, slaughtered the last of their enemies before our eyes while, on a distant hill, […]
The Crown: Netflix’s Royal Affair
‘Prepare to be welcomed into the coveted world of power and privilege….the leaders of an empire await,’ states the blurb on Netflix about The Crown. Whether or not you subscribe to the streaming service you will doubtless be aware of the eagerly anticipated new series about the reign of Elizabeth II from Peter Morgan, (of […]
Close to the Enemy: Episode One
Close to the Enemy (Episode 1/7, BBC Two, 10 November), written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, confronts, over seven episodes, important historical issues concerning the way we handle political evil. Set in Britain in 1947, the drama centres around two opposing forces among the victors of WWII: those who are investigating German nationals for alleged […]
Victorian Slum: Episode One
In the jungle that is broadcast television different genres often exhibit quite different relationships with the truth. Top of the truthfulness table must be ‘reality shows’, Big Brother and its successors. BB surveilled its contestants 24/7 and it really did show people doing what they purported to be doing. No lies there, all falsity was […]