'Bastard Executioner' Review: Game Of Groans
The Bastard Executioner is less the new, more accessible Game of Thrones than a reward FX has granted creator Kurt Sutter for doing such a good job making motorcycles gangs semi-sympathetic for seven season on Sons of Anarchy. Set in 14th-century Wales (I know—I’ll wait while you put a season pass on your DVR right now), TBE tells the tale of a former knight and loving family man who becomes the title character, a “punisher” (yes, they sometimes call him that, which only makes me want to see this) who lops off heads or other body parts with a swift ka-chinnng of his mighty sword.
Everything surrounding the colorfully bloody bastard-execution-ing is grungy soap opera. The series asks us to become involved with the plight of Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones), a doughty Welshman whose life is disrupted by a British baron (Aquarius’ Brian F. O’Byrne) and his sadistic chamberlain, Milus Corbett played by a Stephen Moyer who looks energized in his freedom from True Blood.
Through a series of skirmishes, deceptions, and misunderstandings that end up positioning Brattle and Corbett against each other in an uneasy truce, Brattle becomes an executioner for the British even as he works to subvert them on the sly.
The show’s most notable co-star is Katey Sagal, looking here like Patti Smith and sounding like Natasha from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. She plays Annora, a mystical healer who tells Brattle it’s his destiny to become an executioner, and preferably a bastardy one.
This being a Kurt Sutter show, and one that FX doubtless hopes will trade on the popularity of Thrones, you may be sure that there are a lot of battle scenes, lots of macho bellowing, lots of swords going in one side of a sternum or head and emerging from the other side with a moist, sound-effects sploosh.
It looks as though the series is going to try and off-set this testosterone-fest with the prominent presence of the Baroness Ventris (Flora Spencer-Longhurst), an intelligent woman thrust into a leadership position and, I’m guessing, a possible love interest for Brattle, should he ever take a pause from being a good-hearted bastard. But on the basis of the two-hour pilot and one subsequent episode made available for review, The Bastard Executioner is good on action scenes, but inferior to your average Masterpiece Theatre entry when it comes to period-piece, costume-drama intrigue.
The Bastard Executioner airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
