The Last Kingdom Season 3
I finished watching this on Monday.
Spoilers behind cut.
It's a while (well, a year, I haven't had time to re-watch) since I watched season 2, but my impression at the end of this season is that it's the best yet. There was some harrowing stuff in it, for sure - Thyra's death was particularly horrific and sad - but I don't think the move to Netflix has upped the violence content too much. Well, maybe a bit, but I'm pretty sure there were moments in seasons 1 and 2 where I had to cover my eyes. In fact, I know there were, because yesterday, I re-watched the first ever episode, which for some reason I'd never got around to watching all the way through, and there was a scene in that where I had to look away. Anything to do with eyes and I just can't watch.
Anyway, re: season 3, the stand-out performance for me, as always, was David Dawson as King Alfred. He was just amazing, and if the series does get a fourth season (no news on that as yet), he's going to be very much missed. Stand out scene of the entire season was, for me, the last meeting between Uhtred and Alfred, in which Alfred makes it clear to Uhtred how important he is to him, even though there is no mention of him in the written chronicles.
I also loved Uhtred's scenes with Brida, which brought the series back around to its beginnings in many ways, and that, despite there being (or seeming to be) a new woman in Uhtred's life, that he had not forgotten his dead wife Gisela and that Skade got her well-deserved comeuppance. What I vaguely gather from reading the Saxon Chronicles Wiki is that the show version of Skade wasn't much like the one in the books, who was more like Brida -a woman warrior -instead of a sort of Viking version of that small, nasty blonde girl who all the boys liked, and who made your life a misery in high school. I do feel a bit guilty for enjoying seeing Uhtred drown her in a pond so much, but she was just such a nasty piece of work.
Speaking of female characters, as previously stated, Bernard Cornwell's novels (the ones I've read anyway) tend to feature only one important female character at a time, on the principle (I suspect) that his mainly male readership will get bored if the hero shags the same woman for more than one book/series. There has been something of that in the show - Iseult in season 1, Gisela in season 2 - but there has also been a consistent group of interesting female characters with their own Thing going on. These include Abbess Hild, Aethelflead of Mercia, Brida, and most notably in this series, Queen Aelswith, Alfred's wife. Her implacable hatred of Uhtred sort of semi-casts her in a villain's role and she's not really that likeable, but she stands by her principles, and boy is she tough. Her last scene with Alfred was very sad, because, after consistently being on the same page (as it were) for so long), in Alfred's last moments they drifted disastrously out of sync.
On a lighter note, rewatching that very first episode confirmed for me what I'd suspected - which is that both Father Beoca and Young Ragnar haven't aged at all. Both look exactly the same as they did in the first episode, for most of which Uhtred and Brida were still kids. Heh!
Also, Alexander Dreymon's Danish accent has got more extreme in season 3. He's become so singsong it at times sounds slightly ridiculous.
Finally, for those of you who were worried about it, the Danes have obviously managed to find that new source of guyliner they were looking for. Some of them have plastered it on so thick they look like someone punched them in both eyes.
For those of you without Netflix, according to Amazon, the season is coming out on DVD/Blu Ray, which is good news. That'll become less and less the case as time passes, I suspect, so grab it while you can.
This entry was originally posted at https://shapinglight.dreamwidth.org/3784424.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Spoilers behind cut.
It's a while (well, a year, I haven't had time to re-watch) since I watched season 2, but my impression at the end of this season is that it's the best yet. There was some harrowing stuff in it, for sure - Thyra's death was particularly horrific and sad - but I don't think the move to Netflix has upped the violence content too much. Well, maybe a bit, but I'm pretty sure there were moments in seasons 1 and 2 where I had to cover my eyes. In fact, I know there were, because yesterday, I re-watched the first ever episode, which for some reason I'd never got around to watching all the way through, and there was a scene in that where I had to look away. Anything to do with eyes and I just can't watch.
Anyway, re: season 3, the stand-out performance for me, as always, was David Dawson as King Alfred. He was just amazing, and if the series does get a fourth season (no news on that as yet), he's going to be very much missed. Stand out scene of the entire season was, for me, the last meeting between Uhtred and Alfred, in which Alfred makes it clear to Uhtred how important he is to him, even though there is no mention of him in the written chronicles.
I also loved Uhtred's scenes with Brida, which brought the series back around to its beginnings in many ways, and that, despite there being (or seeming to be) a new woman in Uhtred's life, that he had not forgotten his dead wife Gisela and that Skade got her well-deserved comeuppance. What I vaguely gather from reading the Saxon Chronicles Wiki is that the show version of Skade wasn't much like the one in the books, who was more like Brida -a woman warrior -instead of a sort of Viking version of that small, nasty blonde girl who all the boys liked, and who made your life a misery in high school. I do feel a bit guilty for enjoying seeing Uhtred drown her in a pond so much, but she was just such a nasty piece of work.
Speaking of female characters, as previously stated, Bernard Cornwell's novels (the ones I've read anyway) tend to feature only one important female character at a time, on the principle (I suspect) that his mainly male readership will get bored if the hero shags the same woman for more than one book/series. There has been something of that in the show - Iseult in season 1, Gisela in season 2 - but there has also been a consistent group of interesting female characters with their own Thing going on. These include Abbess Hild, Aethelflead of Mercia, Brida, and most notably in this series, Queen Aelswith, Alfred's wife. Her implacable hatred of Uhtred sort of semi-casts her in a villain's role and she's not really that likeable, but she stands by her principles, and boy is she tough. Her last scene with Alfred was very sad, because, after consistently being on the same page (as it were) for so long), in Alfred's last moments they drifted disastrously out of sync.
On a lighter note, rewatching that very first episode confirmed for me what I'd suspected - which is that both Father Beoca and Young Ragnar haven't aged at all. Both look exactly the same as they did in the first episode, for most of which Uhtred and Brida were still kids. Heh!
Also, Alexander Dreymon's Danish accent has got more extreme in season 3. He's become so singsong it at times sounds slightly ridiculous.
Finally, for those of you who were worried about it, the Danes have obviously managed to find that new source of guyliner they were looking for. Some of them have plastered it on so thick they look like someone punched them in both eyes.
For those of you without Netflix, according to Amazon, the season is coming out on DVD/Blu Ray, which is good news. That'll become less and less the case as time passes, I suspect, so grab it while you can.
This entry was originally posted at https://shapinglight.dreamwidth.org/3784424.html. Please comment there using OpenID.