DDB9000,
Speaking of "what's coming next," high school students and their parents are all in pre-college mode on "American Crime" this season. However, rape on college campuses is often treated exactly as it is in this series, only parents are distant or out of the picture altogether, and the person who is raped is…

Thus my final plea in reference to Oliver Twist with his infamous empty bowl. Maybe if BBC had given the creators behind this series more to work with they might have gone overboard Kurt Sutter style. Perhaps restrictions make a writer or producers stop and think. It seems as though in the entertainment industry,…

I see what you mean. As the show runner of another historical fiction television series once said, after I and others had complained about what I call "moron music" ruining a scene by cueing the audience as to the emotion expected, "Television despises an audio vacuum." In the previous-episode segments on "The Last…

My first concern upon hearing that yet another television series would be devoted to historical fiction was that we were in for more of the same: epic narrative, the fight to the death of two men, representing two sides, in the case of “The Last Kingdom,” the Saxons and/or Celts against the Danes. I was
pleasantly…

Did you know the word "pedant" has the word "ape" in it, as a partial anagram? The rest spells "dent," as in "Dent do that, ye little fiend!" Not everyone who posts on a comment thread has to be as dumb as a bucket of rocks.

A contest of religion is not the same as a contest of faith. In Episode 7, what began as war deciding whether pagans or Christians would rule ancient Britain emerges as a conflict that challenges preconceived ideas on both sides. Guthrum recognizes the power of Alfred's writing at the same time Alfred is forced to…

Remember when the super-pretty mean-boy and mean-girl crowd in high school voted the two homeliest kids in the world as Homecoming King and Queen, just because they could get away with it? Does anyone else feel like Kurt Sutter is having a go at his critics by putting together such an awful finale? It’s as if he’s…

OK then. I'll at least watch every version of "A Christmas Carol" as penance.

Read everything by Alex in this comment thread, and you cannot go wrong when trying to keep track of your EIBs (Early Inhabitants of Britain). More than a few others posting here are interested in the question you raise and have a decent knowledge, it seems to me. The last time I studied medieval literature I had a…

I keep putting it off, my "Vikings" experience. Maybe I'll follow it this year when insipid Christmas specials start to take over . . . .

How great is "The Knick"! That first season cliffhanger when the close-up of a medicine bottle reveals that the Einsteins at the mental hospital are going to try to cure Thackery's cocaine addiction with heroin. Disaster at the crossroad where science, religion, and money intersect: never trite and never gratuitous.

"The Last Kingdom" also has the best comment threads of any of the currently (and previously!) running series devoted to the genre of historical fiction. I hope the series will be renewed.

Even more interesting when you bring up the role of the Celts. Thanks!

All parents understand chapter and verse why God made two-year-olds adorable: so that we do not kill them. That is to say, that there is something in
our DNA that makes us tolerate our pint-sized loved ones no matter what they do until they grow out of it—even when they are eighteen and still living in the
basement. …

Thanks! Even more good reasons to read the novels.

Thank you for your generous and thoughtful response to my challenge to producers. Now I plan to read the novels.

Here is as good a place as any to acknowledge that this example of the genre of historical fiction in a television series does a good job of depicting women and how they live amongst the men who serve as the main characters in the interweaving plots, conspiracy to commit regicide and captivity narrative.

I haven’t read Cornwell’s novels yet, but I have given some thought to the challenges involved in adapting historical fiction for television, by way of explaining the crisis
depicted in this episode, from the point of view of genre.