'Britannia': upcoming 'sword-and-sandal' historical epic tv show

[Martini Sigil]

Do we have a premiere date?

[AncalagonTheBlack]

16 hours ago, Martini Sigil said:

Do we have a premiere date?

Jan. 18 in the UK/Ireland.Rest of the world on Amazon,but no date yet.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Winter Solstice Red Band Trailer

 

[Myrddin]

Hope this is as good as that trailer looks. I'd love to see a well made Celtic Britain show.

[red snow]

11 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Winter Solstice Red Band Trailer

 

Better than that bloody awful trailer with the humour and Muse-like soundtrack. Still leaves me wondering what the actual tone of the show will be.

[Zorral]

Radio Times runs a description of this series:

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2018-01-17/sky-atlantic-britannia-review-game-of-thrones-meets-the-most-debauched-year-you-ever-had-at-glastonbury/

Honestly, from the trailers, it looks -- and sounds awful (like the sound track for King Arthur or something else equally awful with contempo music when the chron location is centuries otherwise).  But I may be wrong and if I am I'll be glad1

[DireWolfSpirit]

I find trailers to be almost worthless towards guaging, better to wait and judge the real thing.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Off work tomorrow and my wife is nightshift, so I think I'll light candles, open a bottle of red wine,  turn the lights off and watch the first episode.  If I really like it I'll binge a few, if not I'm ready to start season 3 in my GOT rewatch.

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I find trailers to be almost worthless towards guaging, better to wait and judge the real thing.

Um, for instance that refutes this, see Knightfall. From the first descriptions and trailer people knew it was going to be awful.

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Um, for instance that refutes this, see Knightfall. From the first descriptions and trailer people knew it was going to be awful.

I think if a trailer is bad, it means the source material is bad -- they literally had no sufficiently strong material to put together some highlights. But you're right, a good trailer may just be made up of the 30 seconds of material that's decent amid an hour of crap. 

[red snow]

On 17/01/2018 at 7:41 PM, Zorral said:

Radio Times runs a description of this series:

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2018-01-17/sky-atlantic-britannia-review-game-of-thrones-meets-the-most-debauched-year-you-ever-had-at-glastonbury/

Honestly, from the trailers, it looks -- and sounds awful (like the sound track for King Arthur or something else equally awful with contempo music when the chron location is centuries otherwise).  But I may be wrong and if I am I'll be glad1

I read that too and the "talks modern so that we can empathise with the cast" screams lazy and patronising to the audience. Then again radio times shouldn't be acting as a promo piece for Sky shows.

The phrase I'm wanting to hear is something along the lines of "this is the most gratuitous fun since Spartacus:blood and sand". That would get me interested.

It seems the show was either so good people are too busy bingeing it to comment or (I suspect more likely) no-one from the forum has bothered to watch it yet.

[john]

I watched the first episode. It was pretty good, certainly interesting enough to continue but not exactly must watch tv.

It feels kind of cheap. Vikings, which must have a smaller budget, looks more genuine and realistic (but Britannia does seem to have a lot more cast and location costs). But it is also making the choice of depicting everything in a flashy modern way and scaling the epicness right down. Dialogue is deliberately modern. Female tribespeople are glamourous and attractive.  Roman warriors appear in no more than fours. The camerawork is always frenetic enough to disguise that there’s only 6 people involved in any battle.

It also has some odd tonal choices, going into broad comedy at points. Lots of britishisms about rain and so on used frequently. Julian Rhind Tutt plays his tribal prince character exactly the same as his surgeon character from Green Wing.

HOWEVER, there’s plenty of good stuff about it too. David Morrissey is great as the GoT inspired general Plautius who only makes brutal, uncompromising decisions. And the drug strand, a significant part of the show, is very enjoyable. Visions, dreams, gibbering, smearing things on faces.  Mackenzie Crook as the chief Druid is fantastic, a creepy otherworldly performance. And you’ve got a more traditional story of the Druidic Outcast with Jedi mind control type powers (probably just hypnosis, no evidence so far that anything supernatural is actually going on) fallen in with a young girl who he has to reluctantly protect.

So there is some gratuitous fun, although I wouldn’t say it was on the level of Spartacus, but it is trying to do a lot more things and be a more complex show. Overall I liked it.

[BigFatCoward]

24 minutes ago, john said:

I watched the first episode. It was pretty good, certainly interesting enough to continue but not exactly must watch tv.

It feels kind of cheap. Vikings, which must have a smaller budget, looks more genuine and realistic (but Britannia does seem to have a lot more cast and location costs). But it is also making the choice of depicting everything in a flashy modern way and scaling the epicness right down. Dialogue is deliberately modern. Female tribespeople are glamourous and attractive.  Roman warriors appear in no more than fours. The camerawork is always frenetic enough to disguise that there’s only 6 people involved in any battle.

It also has some odd tonal choices, going into broad comedy at points. Lots of britishisms about rain and so on used frequently. Julian Rhind Tutt plays his tribal prince character exactly the same as his surgeon character from Green Wing.

HOWEVER, there’s plenty of good stuff about it too. David Morrissey is great as the GoT inspired general Plautius who only makes brutal, uncompromising decisions. And the drug strand, a significant part of the show, is very enjoyable. Visions, dreams, gibbering, smearing things on faces.  Mackenzie Crook as the chief Druid is fantastic, a creepy otherworldly performance. And you’ve got a more traditional story of the Druidic Outcast with Jedi mind control type powers (probably just hypnosis, no evidence so far that anything supernatural is actually going on) fallen in with a young girl who he has to reluctantly protect.

So there is some gratuitous fun, although I wouldn’t say it was on the level of Spartacus, but it is trying to do a lot more things and be a more complex show. Overall I liked it.

To be fair the first episode of Spartacus was dogshite, it did not even hint at the ridiculous joy that was to come. 

[Annara Snow]

6 hours ago, red snow said:

I read that too and the "talks modern so that we can empathise with the cast" screams lazy and patronising to the audience. Then again radio times shouldn't be acting as a promo piece for Sky shows.

The phrase I'm wanting to hear is something along the lines of "this is the most gratuitous fun since Spartacus:blood and sand". That would get me interested.

It seems the show was either so good people are too busy bingeing it to comment or (I suspect more likely) no-one from the forum has bothered to watch it yet.

"Gratuitous fun"?! 

 

So fun is something that can be pointless and unnecessary in a TV show? Unless it's supposed to be an educational programme, I'm pretty sure fun is the whole point of a TV show, or at least one of its main points.  

Quote

It feels kind of cheap. Vikings, which must have a smaller budget, looks more genuine and realistic (but Britannia does seem to have a lot more cast and location costs). But it is also making the choice of depicting everything in a flashy modern way and scaling the epicness right down. Dialogue is deliberately modern. Female tribespeople are glamourous and attractive.  Roman warriors appear in no more than fours. The camerawork is always frenetic enough to disguise that there’s only 6 people involved in any battle

To be fair, what dialogue would be time-appropriate? You can't have actors talking in the language those people actually spoke, and I don't believe we have any examples of their turn of phrase and the way they talked. Any kind of dialogue you wrote is going to be anachronistic. 

Also, why wouldn't females of that time be attractive?

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

"Gratuitous fun"?! 

 

So fun is something that can be pointless and unnecessary in a TV show? Unless it's supposed to be an educational programme, I'm pretty sure fun is the whole point of a TV show, or at least one of its main points.  

To be fair, what dialogue would be time-appropriate? You can't have actors talking in the language those people actually spoke, and I don't believe we have any examples of their turn of phrase and the way they talked. Any kind of dialogue you wrote is going to be anachronistic. 

Also, why wouldn't females of that time be attractive?

We are speaking of enough faithful research to allow suspension of disbelief, that allows for submersion that blocks out the world around us. Without suspension of disbelief where is this  'fun' of which you speak --  unless this 'fun is making fun of a mess, which provides a sense of superiority of intelligence, etc.

[Annara Snow]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

We are speaking of enough faithful research to allow suspension of disbelief, that allows for submersion that blocks out the world around us. Without suspension of disbelief where is this  'fun' of which you speak --  unless this 'fun is making fun of a mess, which provides a sense of superiority of inunsuretelligence, etc.

 I was not talking about fun. Others were talking about fun. "Gratuitous fun", specifically, which sounds really strange. I don't know what is unnecesary fun in a TV show, as opposed to necessary one. 

Quote

We are speaking of enough faithful research to allow suspension of disbelief 

Quote

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

 I was not talking about fun. Others were talking about fun. "Gratuitous fun", specifically, which sounds really strange. I don't know what is unnecesary fun in a TV show, as opposed to necessary one. 

I wasn't addressing gratuitous fun either, whatever that means.  Gratuitous violence is violence that is there for the delectation of audience sensation, not for character or story.  Perhaps that applies to the term 'gratuitous' when it comes to fun too?  it distracts from the action, the character development, confuses the tone and tends to make a mess to no point?

[Zorral]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jan/18/britannia-review-jez-butterworths-epic-fantasy-rules-the-airwaves

 

[red snow]

12 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

To be fair the first episode of Spartacus was dogshite, it did not even hint at the ridiculous joy that was to come. 

Yeah - Spartacus taught me not to judge a show by it's first episode. I still recall thinking respected members of this forum had lost their edge when they kept saying how good the rest of season one was.

8 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

"Gratuitous fun"?! 

 

So fun is something that can be pointless and unnecessary in a TV show? Unless it's supposed to be an educational programme, I'm pretty sure fun is the whole point of a TV show, or at least one of its main points.  

To be fair, what dialogue would be time-appropriate? You can't have actors talking in the language those people actually spoke, and I don't believe we have any examples of their turn of phrase and the way they talked. Any kind of dialogue you wrote is going to be anachronistic.

Gratuitous = "given unearned or without recompense", or, "not called for by the circumstances".

I'm not sure why that word can't proceed "fun" - especially in the context of "it's probably mindless shit but at least it's entertaining with sex/violence/general OTT dialed up to the max in the name of entertainment"?

Zorral caught my drift.

But to be pedantic let's just say " it probably has enough sex, violence and witty one-liners to mask the fact that it doesn't make any real sense in the setting it's pretending to be in" and as long as that's an enjoyable exprience I like to use "grauitous fun" rather than having fun reading or watching a well researched piece on British Rome.

I don't know, maybe saying "spartacus fun" would have been less controversial?

As for the dialogue and the show bearing little reseblance to the time it's supposed to be set - I guess the following clip highlights the difference between ignoring facts for fun and ignoring them because you can't be arsed to create the illusion of something feeling genuine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_AmdvxbPT8

 

 

[Annara Snow]

47 minutes ago, red snow said:

 

As for the dialogue and the show bearing little reseblance to the time it's supposed to be set - I guess the following clip highlights the difference between ignoring facts for fun and ignoring them because you can't be arsed to create the illusion of something feeling genuine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_AmdvxbPT8

 

 

I haven't seen the show. I have no opinions on it I'm just really curious what, in this case would be "resemblance to the time it's supposed to be set" in terms of dialogue, and how exactly you'd go about "creating the illusion of something feeling genuine", i.e. like you're actually watching Celts from the 1st century, of you could be arsed.

I mean, I guess you could employing a historical linguist to do their best to translate all the dialogue in Ancient Celtic, and then force the actors to actually speak their lines like that, and put subtitles for the audience...

...That would certainly be groundbreaking.

 But somehow I suspect that's not what you had in mind.

So... I'm guessing everyone would still be speaking Modern English, right? But you would want a more "authentic" dialogue? So, again... hire a scholar to guess as to how 1st century Celts spoke in their everyday life, based on the few hundreds of documents and fragments in their language that have been preserved, and then translate those exact turns of phrases into English?

...That would certainly be quite a lot of arsing.
And would still be pretty questionable and full of guesswork, as I'm going to hazard a guess that you can't get a good idea of how people spoke in everyday life based just on some inscription you've found. 

Or, maybe, you know, we don't really have much of a freaking clue they spoke and what vocabulary or idioms they used, wouldn't understand a single thing even if we did, and any idea that someone could shoot a show with "authentic" dialogue or "genuine" feeling of what it was like to live among 1st century Celts is utterly preposterous?

But maybe I'm wrong. I do want to know how one would go about making it "authentic" for something set in that time period and location. Can you name any examples?