The October Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman THE LAST KINGDOM -- How England Was Made

"If you were alive in 880, the word 'England' would mean nothing," says Bernard Cornwell, author of "The Last Kingdom," his chronicles of Saxon history and the basis for the TV series from BBC now streaming on Netflix. After Rome fell, England splintered into unaffiliated fiefdoms; King Arthur, his Knights, and Tristan and Isolde made it out alive in our imaginations from the dark of ancient Briton. Various Germanic tribes called Saxons invaded in the 5th century. By the 9th, when the story of Uhtred the warrior (above) and King Alfred begins, the Viking Danes had moved in on the Saxon kingdoms and were picking them off -- all except Alfred's in Wessex, where brawn would be outmaneuvered by brains.

Early in that war the Danes had Alfred pinned down in several square miles of swamp until 878 when he called up swords from all over England and inflicted a decisive defeat on joint Danish armies. Alfred's descendants regained the 3 Northern kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, fulfilling his dream of uniting England under one king (and one God -- Alfred was pious). His foresight and strategic win in 878 (Season 1's conclusion) led historians of the 1500's to call him "the Great". Without Alfred, England might now be Daneland and Danish our mother tongue.

Cornwell (shown below) uses his Saxon adventures to tell the "incredibly untaught " story of how England was won, and he spins good hero in the vein of Horatio Hornblower or loose-cannon Richard Sharpe. (His many historical novels include the Napoleonic era Sharpe tales starring Sean Bean in a lengthy PBS film series.) Cornwell's Saxon chronicles are masterful water and land battle epics -- though you have to dig out from under sword and shield to piece together historical narrative or gain context. Still, it's for exposure to King Alfred and his constructs of civilian order that the TV series has food value, unless gritty battlefield action and strategy is your thing. Then the novels and TV series are total feasts. Season 2 of "The Last Kingdom" is filming now (Series 1 filmed in Wales, Denmark, and Hungary). It contains characters who were real contemporaries of Alfred -- a game of thrones anchored more in history than white-walkers and dragons.

Cornwell's birth father, William Oughtred, dated his lineage back to Northumbria, whence comes our fictional hero Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon, American Horror Story alum), a swaggering, insolent hero born Saxon, bred Dane, accepted nowhere. Through Uhtred the warrior we come to know Alfred's life and his descendants' effort to unite England. Uhtred is a Saxon nobleman's young boy when the Danes capture his homeland of Northumbria; Uhtred Sr. is killed by Dane Earl Ragnar and the boy is taken and raised happily by Ragnar (Peter Gantzler, below, with young Uhtred). Uhtred asks Ragnar why the Danes keep coming to Britain. Ragnar explains that Denmark is wet, harsh, and the ground is so flat and sandy you can't grow a fart. We are here to grow. If you want land and wealth, you have to take it.

As he nears maturity, Uhtred sees his Danish home upended by the murder of Ragnar's family, leaving him and Brida (Emily Cox), a Saxon girl also raised with Uhtred, on the run from Danes who blame him for the murders. The pair make their way to Ubba, a menacing Viking wild man (Norwegian Rune Temte, below) to find that Uhtred's rumored infamy had reached Ubba's ears, making him their mortal enemy. They stay on the run.

Uhtred and Brida head south to Wessex, the only kingdom that remains in Saxon hands. Uhtred wants to recoup his Northumbrian ancestral home and title from the invaders but as a youth he is, in his own words, arrogant and stupid, incapable of ingratiating himself with Alfred (the competent David Dawson, below). Alfred, however, sees a resource in him to learn the ways of the Danes -- they intend to use each other.

When Uhtred and Brida meet the soft-spoken but ruthless leader, we and they get our first glimpse of Alfred's power -- his use of the written word. ("When a man dies, if nothing is written, he is soon forgotten.") His inner sanctum (below) is filled top to bottom with handwritten scrolls describing his actions, findings, translations, and scholarship. (Later Guthrum, a Danish occupier, brandishes one of Alfred's scrolls: "This magic is words without sound -- voices without people; I am going to learn how to use this magic.") Alfred is driven by the order he finds in ancient scholarship, the church, and the law. Uhtred could care less; he thinks Alfred is a pious weakling. But by watching the relationship develop between the paganized Saxon action man and the devout, intellectual king until Uhtred becomes strategist and military leader, you gain the essence of the story.

Cornwell is described by peers as a brilliant writer of battles with "an unflinching approach to bloodshed" (Daily Mail), but domestic relations is not his thing. The TV series succeeds better than Cornwell's first two books in investing the saga with relationships that make you halfway care, while providing tension between Christian and pagan. Aelswith, Alfred's whiny Queen (Eliza Butterworth, below) never stops whispering to Alfred that Uhtred must die because of his heathen ways.

Uhtred has two lovers and a wife in the first season and his women make their mark. Awesome Brida is a brazen warrior and prickly fem; Charlie Murphy's Iseult (below) mesmerizes Uhtred and the camera with a quiet intensity that she also brings to Rebellion, a 4-parter about the Irish Easter Uprising in 1916 (also streaming on Netflix).

The BBC series is executive-produced by two familiars --Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant of Downton Abbey. A third carry-over is composer John Lunn whose score for Kingdom is unimaginably different from DA; Faroese musician Eivor adds unearthly vocals that get one's pagan up. (She hales from the Danish Faroe Islands which have old folk traditions.)

Although Cornwell's novels and the series introduce King Alfred as the foil to the warrior's ambition to recover his birthright, it is Dreymon's handsome Uhtred whose life-force drives the action. We are due for a full-on treatment of Alfred because his achievements were so foundational to modern civics. Alfred created defense and tax systems, borough organization, representative rule, a legal code; his center of scholarship in Oxford became Oxford University. Many millennia and despotic kings later, his organizational achievements became touchstones during the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Victorian era and onward to the present. Perhaps Alfred's good governing will make it into the TV series if renewals are forthcoming, but for now one hopes that Uhtred gets his land back and hangs up his sword.

Note: the Scandinavian seafaring pirates were called Vikings but were referred to as Danes when living in England.

The above post was written by Lee Liberman, 

our greatly valued, monthly correspondent

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9th Century Britain, Bernard Cornwell, British history films, British TV series, historical epics, THE LAST KINGDOM,

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August's Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman -- PEAKY BLINDERS 3: The Double Triple Cross

This not so under-the-radar cult series -- now available for streaming via Netflix -- is a bouquet to British screenwriter Steven Knight's heritage and a bite out of Britain's 20th century criminal past -- the gangs of Birmingham in the 1920's. Both of Knight's parents descend from Birmingham Peaky Blinders gang culture, a group notorious for tucking razor blades into their caps for cutting victims. The story of the Peakies resonates with our Godfather & Boardwalk Empire epics but is colored with its  iconic Brummy aesthetic; Birmingham was the clanging, banging industrial seat of Britain's metal works.

Literature from across the pond evolved from ancient stories of knights, chivalry, and wars of thrones; eras were defined by kings and queens. British drama has matured into tales of the aristocracy and politics; its long lines of family gangs & rivalries have simply not been written about.

In an interview with BBC History Magazine, Knight (above) contrasts the narrative of America by its settlers as a romance of the promised land; Europe was old and bad -- America the stuff of myth. The settling of the American West and the stories of laborers, cowboys and industrialization turned the mundane into our American mythology.

Knight's English version of the American gangster tale starts with hero Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy, in high strung but authoritative command of the Peaky universe) riding into his Brum slum (Birmingham) on a horse. It is the start of any American western and Knight used the reference on purpose, although Tommy Shelby's personal wild west derives from his gypsy ties to the land of his dead mother. (Knight uncovered the tidbit of Charlie Chaplin's birth on the Black Patch, Smethwick, near Birmingham, a gypsy camp that figures in Peaky Blinders.) From the stories passed down to Knight, the filmmaker wove tales and images together that stay imprinted on the viewer's mind as they did on his, such as that of a group of men huddled over a plain wooden table drinking beer out of jam jars, fogged in booze and smoke -- impeccably dressed bookies handling piles of money when no one else had any.

Luckily an ingenious story-teller has his arms around the Peaky Blinders. Knight wrote Dirty Pretty Things and Locke, among other tensely-plotted stories. (His reputation attracts the cream of English acting, all eager to fit their schedules around Knight's torrid filming schedule.) As the complex plotting goes forward, the question lurks whether the family can live down the past. Despite the new opulence, signs are everywhere that the bottom-feeding Shelby's have a long climb to fit into polite society -- their forward motion in Season 3 marks their lives with even more dour pessimism than in Seasons 1 & 2.

No surprise that young actor Finn Cole was gleeful in his enthusiasm about season 3. His character Michael, Aunt Polly Gray's long lost son, is aptly named to follow in Michael Corleone's path. He morphs from sunny young protege destined to benefit from legitimizing illegal businesses to wearing the tortured face of the portrait of Dorian Gray aging in the attic of Oscar Wilde's famous novel. Michael Gray turns steely cold, begging to pull the trigger on a Shelby enemy, a priest who had abused him in childhood (played by Paddy Considine, far left in picture at bottom.) We'll see in future if Michael's middle class rearing in an adoptive family will make his young adult life any less fraught than his older Shelby cousins whose youth in a Small Heath slum schooled them in ruthlessness. For now, Finn Cole is relishing every minute of Michael's roller coaster ride to hell (below, and at bottom, pictured next to his real life brother, Joe Cole, who plays brother John Shelby, second and third from right.)

Series 1 and 2 accomplish the Shelby conquest of the territories of Birmingham bookie mogul Billy Kimber and his London doppleganger, Darby Sabini. Nearly meeting his end at the hand of Sabini and other forces in Season 2, Tommy is saved by Winston Churchill who will expect payment in future. Season 3 opens with the favor being called in. High up government Brits want Tommy to assist a family of exiled White Russian nobility who are plotting against Bolsheviks in their former homeland. Below, the Russians promise Tommy recompense in jewels he thinks they will never deliver; he plans a double-cross.

After a fevered fan wait, season 3 begins with Tommy's marriage at his splendid home where we learn which of his lovers is the bride but more important, the Russian plot is launched in a classic wedding stramash. Tommy and his family have now converted their huge illegal gambling cash business into objects including the large estate for Tommy and stepped up life styles for family members. There's a religious wife for brother Arthur (most crazed by WWI trenches). Linda, the lovely Kate Phillips (Jane Seymour in Wolf Hall, see her 4th from right in picture at bottom), intends to separate Arthur from the family to pursue a righteous path in America. Sudanese born English actor Alexander Siddig (Game of Thrones) becomes Aunt Polly's (the spectacular Helen McGrory) portrait painter and love interest. He depicts her as a woman of 'style & substance' on canvas, but she fears that 'a woman like me' may be over-reaching.

Luscious Dutch talent Gaite Jansen, Russian Princess Tatiana (below), torments and teases Tommy, tricking him into episodes of obscene decadence and hidden agendas. He excuses his participation in her sex games as "work" --- he needs to find out where the Russians store their trove of precious jewels.

Tom Hardy, stepping in here as Tommy's gemologist, gives us the next iteration of the syrupy duplicitous Jewish crime boss, Alfie Solomons, a character so meaty you want to cut him with a knife and mop up the juice with a loaf of challah. Writer Knight has so many balls in the air that Hardy shouldn't steal every second he's on screen. But he does. (He's shown below and in photograph at bottom, second from left.)

Many actors are seeking the role of the next James Bond, but there is only one who would bring true genius to the part -- the brilliant Tom Hardy.

Season 3 ends with Tommy dividing his behemoth take from the Russian deal among family, while simultaneously putting them in grave danger -- a depressing betrayal and cliffhanger to be resolved by Season 4. The Peaky's do not offer an appetizing ride; Knight pushes the viewer's buttons repeatedly. But intense, clever plotting, idiosyncratic, memorable characters, terrific acting, and the untidy view of the underbelly of Merry old England combine to makes addicts of its die-hard fans. Seasons 4 and 5 have been commissioned, there's a hint Brad Pitt may step in, and Knight hopes to take the Shelby gang to the start of World War II, sorting out if, how, or whether they are able to merge their crude origins with their arrival in polite society.

The above post is written by our monthly

correspondent, Lee Liberman.

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British TV series, crime, dark television, Netflix streaming, PEAKY BLINDERS SEASON 3, Steven Knight, the 1920s,

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