Versailles the TV Show a hearty Recommendation!
I have a new true love!
The TV Show "Versailles". Let me try and convince you to love it too despite me having no idea when it will come to your country. I found it on the interwebs.
Set up: It's the year something or other and Louis the Fourteenth of France is 28 years old and still settling into his reign, because he was only very young when he became king and its probably taken him some time to shake off all the remnants of his Regency. His nobles are getting uppity, so he decides to extend his fathers hunting lodge at Versailles and drag the nobles kicking and screaming to him.
Why you should watch this show. To crib from my livejournal heading.....
The pretty:
This show is very pretty in its costuming and it's filming, and all the palace porn etc. Also their hair Louisa, their hair. The wigs for the guys are at once hilarious and deeply envy making.
Why does my hair not bounce like this?
Seriously. The HAIR LOUISA
Seriously this is some sort of magic
Also there are at least four hot men in this show (for me your mileage may vary). Also the women are very hot too.
The plot:
The plot is pretty much everything I ever want in a show. An all powerful being that everyone is trying to work around without setting them off, and how do you interact with such a person safely. Court politics. Seriously so much plotting and politicking but not in a boring Star Wars Prequels kind of way or a Downton abbey who the fuck cares about the cottage hospital kind of way.
It's also about love and trust and families. Also in my opinion it's well done. There *~are~* some moments where you are confused and it doesn't work as well but for me they were very far and few between. The show doesn't *not* spoonfeed you but it doesn't over spoonfeed you. For me it's the right balance of showing and telling (telling being important sometimes in these type of shows because otherwise you are like "Who is this again? Why is this important?") It also manages to galvanise you to be annoyed the characters don't work out who is plotting (because well you the viewer knows!) but not draw it out so much that all the characters (who aren't plotting) look like utter morons. It drips out at the right rate.
Also almost all the characters have relationships with each other. You know some of those shows where character a only seems to interact with character b, and you are like "Shouldn't they know Character C and have some sort of relationship with or opinion of them?" This is not one of those shows.
Hello Louis XIV
It's also about real life French History and from what I know and what I googled it's reasonably accurate, or what it extrapolates *could* have happened. Although like in all shows like this I have no clue about timelines sometimes? Did a month pass between episodes? Days? Hours? Did the Tardis visit?
The complicated:
Seriously the complicated! The best complicated is between Louis and his brother Philippe. They are brothers, but one is King and the other isn't. How do you give meaning to the brother of the Kings life without undermining the King? How do you trust your brother (for both of them) when there is so much plotting going on and everyone's place is so uncertain. Louis worries that Philippe will betray him but Philippe also worries Louis will betray *him*
Hello Phillipe & Chevalier
Also marrying your childhood sweetheart to your mostly gay brother also throws a spanner in the works. Talk about a complicated love triangle, and then throw in your mostly gay brothers plotting (yet usually hilariously ineffectual) lover and you have like a recipe for complicated.
Also how if you want to be an absolute monarch (and is that a good thing?) how do you get everyone else to be on the same page as you?
And The women! On the surface, as in history, the women are all there as playthings for the men in their lives, and I'm not sure the show passes the Bechdel test but I don't find that a bad thing because this show is spinning around the King of France, and when you are trying to survive at the Court of Versailles your thoughts are going to center around the King. If the King was a Queen it would be just the same.
However in saying that ALL the women in this show have rich inner lives. They are just as well rounded and complicated as their male counterparts, and they scheme and plot and have agency. It's one of those shows where the society it is set in may have been misogynistic and so forth, but the show itself is not. (Though it's not unhistorical either) See warnings for one thing, but one the whole the women are all deep interesting characters just as much as the men, and get almost equal screen time (again the show is about Louis primarily and he's a dude so...)
So I'm just chilling with my wife, my sister in law and my mistress. Nothing weird about sleeping with all of them...right? right? That's not going to cause drama? Right?
The acting. Seriously. George Blagden is mesmerizing in this. He plays the role so well. It to me is a stunning piece of acting. And Alex Vlahos just meets him toe to toe as his brother Phillipe. They both bring their A game, and bring so much depth to the roles. And every other actor does very well as well, I can't think of a weak link.
The warnings:
This show is very French. It's made by the French but is in English. This means there is a great deal of sex and nudity. Although I found it interesting that despite having SO MUCH FLESH all over the place there was very little of it in the gay relationship(s) Unless I'm forgetting. So yes lots of naked people swapping partners all over the place (although that was pretty much reality!)
Also everyone has NO CONCEPT of privacy. It's hilarious. I was like "Oh so this person is chilling in a bath I assume someone is just going to burst in right about....oh there they are" Phillipe usually just wandered through all of the King's mistresses bedrooms and his wife's going "BROTHER WHERE ARE YOU?"
I'm trying to sleep here!
There is one rape or if you looked at it really really really generously "rough sex" scene which to be quite frank is probably one too many (and there is one other dodgy scene now I think about it) but comparing it to most of the other "historical" dramas that include graphic sex is much much much lower than normal. Although I think they could have done without either scene, although they weren't entirely gratuitous I think they might have thought of a better way to show what they were trying to show) . But I feel from the rest of the show and the way it dealt with things I don't think the show is going to go down the Game of Thrones path in making it a feature of the female characters storylines and how they grow as characters etc. So I can deal with that.
The characters are *all* complicated. None of them (bar one maybe) are very nice pure people. They all plot and scheme and all of them do not very nice things at one point or another (to varying degrees), but I found that the characters were on the whole likeable. Unlike Indian Summers were I didn't warm to anyone I found I warmed to almost all the characters or at least was interested in their character arcs.
It's the head of police and the *~female~* physician!
I sympathized a great deal with most of the main characters too, when they were doing things that weren't so great I was like "WTF ARE YOU DOING MAKE BETTER LIFE CHOICES THIS IS NOT GOING TO HELP!" I was invested. I think I screamed at Louis and Philippe about 1200 times "LOOK JUST GIVE EACH OTHER A HUG AND TELL EACH OTHER YOU LOVE THEM AND THEN TRUST EACH OTHER"
Summary of reasons to watch this show.
In conclusion. Go find out how you could watch this show (or when you could watch it)
I am so happy it's getting a season two!
And so are these two I think:
The TV Show "Versailles". Let me try and convince you to love it too despite me having no idea when it will come to your country. I found it on the interwebs.
Set up: It's the year something or other and Louis the Fourteenth of France is 28 years old and still settling into his reign, because he was only very young when he became king and its probably taken him some time to shake off all the remnants of his Regency. His nobles are getting uppity, so he decides to extend his fathers hunting lodge at Versailles and drag the nobles kicking and screaming to him.
Why you should watch this show. To crib from my livejournal heading.....
The pretty:
This show is very pretty in its costuming and it's filming, and all the palace porn etc. Also their hair Louisa, their hair. The wigs for the guys are at once hilarious and deeply envy making.
Why does my hair not bounce like this?
Seriously. The HAIR LOUISA
Seriously this is some sort of magic
Also there are at least four hot men in this show (for me your mileage may vary). Also the women are very hot too.
The plot:
The plot is pretty much everything I ever want in a show. An all powerful being that everyone is trying to work around without setting them off, and how do you interact with such a person safely. Court politics. Seriously so much plotting and politicking but not in a boring Star Wars Prequels kind of way or a Downton abbey who the fuck cares about the cottage hospital kind of way.
It's also about love and trust and families. Also in my opinion it's well done. There *~are~* some moments where you are confused and it doesn't work as well but for me they were very far and few between. The show doesn't *not* spoonfeed you but it doesn't over spoonfeed you. For me it's the right balance of showing and telling (telling being important sometimes in these type of shows because otherwise you are like "Who is this again? Why is this important?") It also manages to galvanise you to be annoyed the characters don't work out who is plotting (because well you the viewer knows!) but not draw it out so much that all the characters (who aren't plotting) look like utter morons. It drips out at the right rate.
Also almost all the characters have relationships with each other. You know some of those shows where character a only seems to interact with character b, and you are like "Shouldn't they know Character C and have some sort of relationship with or opinion of them?" This is not one of those shows.
Hello Louis XIV
It's also about real life French History and from what I know and what I googled it's reasonably accurate, or what it extrapolates *could* have happened. Although like in all shows like this I have no clue about timelines sometimes? Did a month pass between episodes? Days? Hours? Did the Tardis visit?
The complicated:
Seriously the complicated! The best complicated is between Louis and his brother Philippe. They are brothers, but one is King and the other isn't. How do you give meaning to the brother of the Kings life without undermining the King? How do you trust your brother (for both of them) when there is so much plotting going on and everyone's place is so uncertain. Louis worries that Philippe will betray him but Philippe also worries Louis will betray *him*
Hello Phillipe & Chevalier
Also marrying your childhood sweetheart to your mostly gay brother also throws a spanner in the works. Talk about a complicated love triangle, and then throw in your mostly gay brothers plotting (yet usually hilariously ineffectual) lover and you have like a recipe for complicated.
Also how if you want to be an absolute monarch (and is that a good thing?) how do you get everyone else to be on the same page as you?
And The women! On the surface, as in history, the women are all there as playthings for the men in their lives, and I'm not sure the show passes the Bechdel test but I don't find that a bad thing because this show is spinning around the King of France, and when you are trying to survive at the Court of Versailles your thoughts are going to center around the King. If the King was a Queen it would be just the same.
However in saying that ALL the women in this show have rich inner lives. They are just as well rounded and complicated as their male counterparts, and they scheme and plot and have agency. It's one of those shows where the society it is set in may have been misogynistic and so forth, but the show itself is not. (Though it's not unhistorical either) See warnings for one thing, but one the whole the women are all deep interesting characters just as much as the men, and get almost equal screen time (again the show is about Louis primarily and he's a dude so...)
So I'm just chilling with my wife, my sister in law and my mistress. Nothing weird about sleeping with all of them...right? right? That's not going to cause drama? Right?
The acting. Seriously. George Blagden is mesmerizing in this. He plays the role so well. It to me is a stunning piece of acting. And Alex Vlahos just meets him toe to toe as his brother Phillipe. They both bring their A game, and bring so much depth to the roles. And every other actor does very well as well, I can't think of a weak link.
The warnings:
This show is very French. It's made by the French but is in English. This means there is a great deal of sex and nudity. Although I found it interesting that despite having SO MUCH FLESH all over the place there was very little of it in the gay relationship(s) Unless I'm forgetting. So yes lots of naked people swapping partners all over the place (although that was pretty much reality!)
Also everyone has NO CONCEPT of privacy. It's hilarious. I was like "Oh so this person is chilling in a bath I assume someone is just going to burst in right about....oh there they are" Phillipe usually just wandered through all of the King's mistresses bedrooms and his wife's going "BROTHER WHERE ARE YOU?"
I'm trying to sleep here!
There is one rape or if you looked at it really really really generously "rough sex" scene which to be quite frank is probably one too many (and there is one other dodgy scene now I think about it) but comparing it to most of the other "historical" dramas that include graphic sex is much much much lower than normal. Although I think they could have done without either scene, although they weren't entirely gratuitous I think they might have thought of a better way to show what they were trying to show) . But I feel from the rest of the show and the way it dealt with things I don't think the show is going to go down the Game of Thrones path in making it a feature of the female characters storylines and how they grow as characters etc. So I can deal with that.
The characters are *all* complicated. None of them (bar one maybe) are very nice pure people. They all plot and scheme and all of them do not very nice things at one point or another (to varying degrees), but I found that the characters were on the whole likeable. Unlike Indian Summers were I didn't warm to anyone I found I warmed to almost all the characters or at least was interested in their character arcs.
It's the head of police and the *~female~* physician!
I sympathized a great deal with most of the main characters too, when they were doing things that weren't so great I was like "WTF ARE YOU DOING MAKE BETTER LIFE CHOICES THIS IS NOT GOING TO HELP!" I was invested. I think I screamed at Louis and Philippe about 1200 times "LOOK JUST GIVE EACH OTHER A HUG AND TELL EACH OTHER YOU LOVE THEM AND THEN TRUST EACH OTHER"
Summary of reasons to watch this show.
- Historically based court plotting show ala the Tudors, the Borgias, White Queen etc
- Attractive people acting out a well plotted plot, and acting it well! Seriously I was so drawn to so many of the portrayals here.
- Complicated women.
- Well rounded characters that might do bad things but you feel for them because they aren't unlikable.
- A lot of fun strangely. There were so many moments I was just laughing out loud.
- Also I like to imagine this as a sequel to the Musketeers so Louis XIV is actually the son of Aramis. Also Adult Mordred from Merlin is playing Phillipe so he could be a wizard!
- Also it's only ten episodes, so seriously I marathoned this over a long weekend (along with also marathoning the first season of Girls!) It's not a huge commitment!
In conclusion. Go find out how you could watch this show (or when you could watch it)
I am so happy it's getting a season two!
And so are these two I think:
