Sarentrol
Masterful Cinema
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Guillelmina
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Jbuchanan
This bbc-netflix serie has moments of brightness, but it's a bit dissapointing. In my opinion it gets the worst of both; BBC's dullness and netflix's shallowness. I'm gonna do a short list of the reasons i think this.
Positives:
1) Alfred, and a couple more characters that save the show.
2) BBC is usually very faithfull to history and facts. Though plenty of mistakes is still pretty accurate.
3) the plot is very entertaining. A half dane half saxon boy torn by loyalties lying on both shores, and betraying his other half every time he takes action, decides to support Alfred's cause against the people who raised him.
Negatives:
1) The main character is very hard to like. How can i enjoy the serie when i think Uthred is a complete turd? (Yes, he likes calling other people turds constantly). Too arrogant, with that half smile cocky attitude all day long, making not-funny-at-all jokes. He is really annoying.
2) Bad acting. As there is Alfred, Sigfrid, and Hild, there is, on the other hand, many more bad acting-writing than good. Some dialoges and scenes are too forced.
3) political correctness is ruining everything. I won't spoil anything, but i'm sick of XXI century thinking in historic dramas. Women where beaten, they always stayed behind in silence, and tha was OK. Not believing in god didn't make you cool, they would kill you for that. I think that this is killing historical TV. Well produced shows fall into pieces because of this. Instead of having 9th century characters, we just have a bunch of normal people in costumes. I wonder if we'll have a black dude and the gay scene next season...
4) getting that actor from "Reign" (aka crappy gossip girl in carton castles) drives it even lower.
It's a real shame, i has wverything to be good but somehow ot manages not to be. Netflix doesn't find the way of making a good hostoric show yet (marco polo was a fiasco aswell). They'd better leave BBC on it's own doing what they know best.
miromoman
The series revive the founding myth of England, with the Viking and the Anglo-Saxon invaders fighting for hegemony, while the native Britons make an anecdotal and caricaturesque appearance.In spite of the childish and unlikely nature of the ensemble (characters, script, dialogues, psychology, politics, battles, acting and all the rest), the show manages to remain quite entertaining.
chiek-er
Just like the highly entertaining TV series "Games of Thrones" (GOT) that came after author George RR Martin's excellent five-volume fantasy novels, Bernard Cornwell, another brilliant English author whose immensely wonderful book series has spawned this magnificent historical TV series about the Vikings' battle with the Saxons. I like GOT but I love "The Last Kingdom" (LK) chiefly because of the historical nature lending it greater weight and making it more 'grown-up' than a fantasy story like GOT. Specifically LK's story was set in 700s England about Vikings' attempt to swallow up the entire old England. Sure the characters in LK were fictitious, but the geography and history have made the TV series more engrossing and believable. It was fascinating for a non Brit like myself, a geography buff, to learn the how England was carved up into Northumbria, Mercia, Wales, East Anglia and Wessex. Like GOT, the casting in LK was impeccable. Brilliant Danish actors played the marauding Danes (Vikings) while immensely talented English actors played the English. How more authentic can you get. Though it was hard to believe that the Vikings then could speak such excellent English. Just like GOT to enjoy LK optimally one has to read the books in tandem with the TV series. The Last Kingdom has dethroned "Rome" and "The Americans" as my number one TV series.
matteocevese
I love stories set in this period, especially covering political and battle episodes of the age. I found overall the series mediocre, compared especially to Vikings, not because of the adherence to history or costumes or acting, but simply because the whole storytelling is mediocre, similar to a B-rated TV show like Hercules or Xena could be. The protagonist, Uthred, is probably the most unlikable protagonist of a TV show. And not because we can characterize him as good or evil (we don't care, we enjoy watching protagonists with gray areas, or even villains) but simply because he seems like a spoiled brat. Each episode we don't know what he is going to do but most disturbingly we don't understand why he is doing something. "now I want to be an earlderman, now I am a Dane, now I kill people, now I am a loving father, now I hate my 2 months old son, now I love God, now I hate him, now I plunder, now I enforce the law. And the same goes for other characters, but obviously Uthred is the most annoying. We need consistent storytelling, we don't care if he is good or bad!
