Beowulf - 'Episode 1'

Lady Blacksmith, Dead Stuntcasting, Sir Not Appearing in Episode 1, Beowulf, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Cheeky McSidekick, Prince Sneerface and the Queen

As the opening credits of Beowulf : Return to the Shieldlands begin and animated gripping beasts crawl across stylised Viking artwork, one thing is clear: This series really wants to be Game of Thrones.

Young Beowulf puts an axe in a troll's head after it kills his father, and is adopted by Hrothgar, King of Heorot (pronounced 'Eret', apparently.) Years later, after being banished for reasons which remain obscure for almost the entire episode (he didn't get on with his less capable foster brother Prince Sneerface and the Queen clearly knew that he was actually Hrothgar's son,) he returns to pay his last respects to the dead king. There's a fight and we meet the Queen, grown up Prince Sneerface and his healer girlfriend Thoroughly Modern Millie*. The Queen is, it turns out, now the Thane of Heorot, part of a sweeping tide of feminism which also sees a female blacksmith and TMM as the chief healer.

While Beowulf's rogue Cheeky McSidekick marries the blacksmith's mum so that... All right, I'm not sure on this one. It might just be to annoy the blacksmith. He doesn't seem set on settling down at all. Anyway, while that is going on, Beowulf find the Reeve murdered, apparently by a mudborn - a sort of goblin-ape - which runs off chasing TMM while Prince Sneerface is busy arresting Beowulf for murder. Cheeky McSidekick interrupts the execution and they hare off to rescue TMM, although the mudborn isn't trying to hurt her, instead saving her from a barghest (a hybrid of wolf and CGI) and seemingly trying for some King Kong action.) It gets in a fight with Beowulf and loses half a hand.

Back at the ranch, TMM goes all CSI Heorot and discovers that the Reeve was actually stabbed, and apparently using a weapon with a round profile, which honestly ought to be pretty easy to track down in nth century Denmark**. You'd think someone might have checked that before condemning the man with only flat-bladed weapons.

Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands is not desperately bad - by which I mean it's a lot better than, say, Olympus, more or less the definition of damning with faint praise - but it's not anything resembling good. The acting is decent, the plot has a few twists, and the fights are okay - when the camera isn't juddering with each impact, which could really get old - but there's nothing much to distinguish it and on the whole it's - so far - pretty standard and predictable fare. It really, really wants to be Game of Thrones, but in many ways represents everything that Game of Thrones is a reaction to, from intrusively modern sensibilities to the small, core cast and straightforward plotting.

* So, obviously the names haven't impacted on me in this thing, and healer chick is the ridiculously liberal one speaking the modern sensibilities.
** The blurb says Britain, and since Beowulf clearly isn't a Geat I can't swear that Heorot hasn't moved.