Netflix: The Last Kingdom vs. Vikings Unearthed

I resisted clicking on the The Last Kingdom because I thought it was about China.

It turns out to be about the earliest kings of England at the period of Viking invasions. The protagonist is a half Saxon and half Viking named Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Several men existed with that name and ruled Bebbanburg (Bamburgh Castle) and author Bernard Cornwell is descended from them. He wrote a series of novels based on historic events called the Saxon Stories. This show is based on those books. The show is gritty and real, noisy, obnoxious, filthy, poor, basic, and violent, rudimentary, sexual and very funny in spots. If you watch closely you'll notice several repeated scene elements, a man in the darkened background sharpening a blade at a stone wheel, for example. It is well researched. This is the beginning of things. Food, clothing, housing, farming implements are all very basic, even among royalty. Old sayings and phrases and terms are used throughout. I learned a whole bunch of new words. Old words, actually.

The story is set in the 9th century AD when England is divided into seven kingdoms.  The kingdoms are overrun one after another by Danes and the last remaining stronghold is Wessex. We observe the Wessex king grow in his position. He is an obnoxious weakling forced to become strong with a very serious and limiting attitude about worshipping God. We see the early kings and their offspring as real people of the types you will know from work. Basically creeps with more sneaky ambition than ability, people born in control of other people with more innate ability than themselves. Others born to power who cannot handle it. And it is weirdly interesting checking Wikipedia and seeing the names and the portraits of the actual people and comparing them with their depictions on this show. I imagine it's impossible to list early kings of England satisfactorily as there were so many ruling concurrently. (scroll to the bottom) The graph shows a period of Danish rule in yellow. The names in yellow and preceding the yellow are the names used in the show.

Fresh with all this new information about how the Vikings took over England, what made them better more vigorous people, made me more open to viewing Vikings Unearthed for an actual scholastic historic perspective.

Vikings Unearthed is dry as dust. It takes them a full episode to get around what The Last Kingdom presents in a single sentence delivered on horseback. The show reviews how it was discovered that Vikings landed in Canada based on bits of iron nails and remnants of early foundries that used very poor found ore spread around. Coming off of the Last Kingdom it takes too much patience to watch. "Could the satellite images actually be the remains of a long hut or is the arrangement simply a natural phenomenon?" We're watching the show for answers, not questions. Just show us the proof and not the aching process of how the tiny bits were put together and how the team got its government funding to continue research. It takes them forever to get down there and dig. And when they do, they make a gigantic deal out of a rock cracked by fire while the Last Kingdom shows how a castle is burned down, and how an entire fleet of Viking ships is destroyed by a single person.

The Last Kingdom shows endless fighting. It shows the physical differences between the Danes, near giants, with hipster tattoos and stylized hair and beards, compared with frail skinny effete Saxons with limp stringy hair and scraggly beards. Through these many characterizations the Danes are shown to be an altogether more dynamic and healthier people. Viewers prefer the Danes to prevail.

In other terms, the difference between the two shows is any random textbook on Egyptian language set against Norman Mailers Ancient Evenings. One is studying a rock cracked by heat and the other is a seething steaming riotous orgy with magnitudes more elements of action and life.

The Last Kingdom: recommended
Vikings Unearthed: yawn