New fandom: "Kings"
Mar. 31st, 2009 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugeeFinally! An entry that isn't heavily laden with woe...
I just recently started watching NBC's new series "Kings", which I heard about at Boskone and was intrigued by the premise. The fact that it's an updated retelling of 1st and 2nd Samuel from the Old Testament was eyebrow-raising enough. Then when I heard that one of my favorite directors, Francis Lawrence (he of "Constantine" and "I Am Legend", whom I suspect is Catholic or was raised Catholic: he tends to include subtle Catholic overtones in his films, though "Constantine" was more overt) is directing it, I just had to watch it.
And I'm glad I did. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited"; Mr. Lawrence and his writers are unafraid to revamp the familiar Biblical figures of the prophet Samuel (or Reverend Samuel), David (David Sheppard, here a farm-boy turned soldier) and Saul (King Saul Benjamin) as noble but flawed people, very human, but no less fascinating, just as Evelyn Waugh portrayed the Marchmain family. The visuals are incredible and the scripts are tight as the bark on a tree (I love how the pesky, comedic B-story pigeons in the second episode wound up being an important element at the very end). Well worth watching, and the episodes are available on NBC.com for your consideration.
I just recently started watching NBC's new series "Kings", which I heard about at Boskone and was intrigued by the premise. The fact that it's an updated retelling of 1st and 2nd Samuel from the Old Testament was eyebrow-raising enough. Then when I heard that one of my favorite directors, Francis Lawrence (he of "Constantine" and "I Am Legend", whom I suspect is Catholic or was raised Catholic: he tends to include subtle Catholic overtones in his films, though "Constantine" was more overt) is directing it, I just had to watch it.
And I'm glad I did. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited"; Mr. Lawrence and his writers are unafraid to revamp the familiar Biblical figures of the prophet Samuel (or Reverend Samuel), David (David Sheppard, here a farm-boy turned soldier) and Saul (King Saul Benjamin) as noble but flawed people, very human, but no less fascinating, just as Evelyn Waugh portrayed the Marchmain family. The visuals are incredible and the scripts are tight as the bark on a tree (I love how the pesky, comedic B-story pigeons in the second episode wound up being an important element at the very end). Well worth watching, and the episodes are available on NBC.com for your consideration.