In the last six months, for a series of reasons I’ll talk about in a future post, I’ve been watching a lot of historical fiction (reading it, well, I’ve never stopped. History books – fiction and not – are among my favourite since I was a kid), with mixed feelings. While you find good and bad stuff in every genre, I have discovered my threshold in terms of tolerance of mistakes or even incongruencies is lower in historical fiction (both series and movies) than in others (say, for instance, horror: I virtually gobble up *everything* Netflix and Amazon Prime decide to pass on the net, no matter the quality). Not that I like it all, quite the opposite, but I do watch all. When history is in the equation, I have often to force myself to continue, and at times I don’t even progress beyond the first season, or worse -as in the case of the case of the infamous The Reign, where I stopped at Episode 5 of the first. (You don’t know what this series is about, even if you do like historical fiction? Good for you – don’t even start).
When history is in the equation, however, I have often to force myself to continue, but often I don’t progress before the first season, or even worse as in the case of the case of the infamous The Reign, where I stopped at Episode 5 of the first. (You don’t know what this series is about, even if you do like historical fiction? Good for you – don’t even start).
Now, for time constraints I can’t at the moment review everything I’m watching, so please feel free to let me know which one among the following titles you’re interested in reading more about, and I’ll post it here in the following weeks.
The Reign [limited to the first 5 episodes of S1, yes. But somehow I feel the rest is not any better]
The Borgias [i.e., the American series with Jeremy Irons. I have already done the European version Borgia last year].
The Last Frontier
Ben-Hur [the recent remake, not the world-famous movie with Charlton Heston]
A.D. Kingdom and Empire
Medici Masters of Florence
Wolf Hall [After the fantastic Hilary Mantel’s book, I’m tackling the series]
The Crown
Marco Polo
Shaka Zulu
Hatfields & McCoys
Generation War
Anthropoid [true story on SS Heydrich]
Silence [Christian missionaries in Japan, by Scorsese]
By the way, you’re going to get the Medici (I’m a long-time fan of this Italian family that has churned out Queens and Popes for centuries) and Shaka Zulu (I’m partial to this amazing personage larger than life) anyway, so feel free to pick others.
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