I’ve been catching up on Beowulf Return to the Shieldlands. It’s not often I record something and end up vaguely wishing I hadn’t bothered. As an aficionado of the original poem, I looked forward to being steeped in Anglo-Saxon mythology. What I got was highly derivative shadows of the real thing. Even Dune’s sand worms got a look in… Discworld without the laughs – well, not intentional ones anyway.
But, and this is the thing, every other part was played by a BAME actor. Okay, I’m happy enough to kick back, suspend disbelief and go with the flow if the story telling is good. Unfortunately, it isn’t, which is why, presumably, there won’t be a second series. And which is why the presence of so many black and Asian actors was so obviously noticeable – it was more interesting than the over convoluted and weak plotting and cardboard characters. Now, I can accept strong female characters, for example, just as I can accept that in Saxon northern Europe the occasional Moor might have stayed around following the Roman retreat. But we are expected to believe that a BAME female blacksmith (a stretch in itself) is also sufficiently skilled in sword-craft to down a warrior during practice bouts. A stretch too far, perhaps. And a whole tribe of warriors were all black? Really? And high-ranking councillors and Thanes?
Yet, in the midst of all these black and Asian Anglo-Saxons, we are told that there aren’t enough parts for BAME actors. Oh, really? Next time I see some leftist claptrap about “too white” paraded on the news by the usual racist suspects, I’ll just think about Beowulf and the BAMEs in the Shieldlands. Indeed, it looked as if there were more BAMEs than mudborn.
I looked forward to the Beowulf series, then as I watched the first episode, my enthusiasm waned. Return to the Shieldlands ? Return to the land of mediocracy more like. The start of the first episode was just awful, those sand things, what rubbish. I wonder what the viewing figures are.
I flatly refused to watch it.
Like yourself, as a fan of both the original story and Anglo-Saxon history in general I was looking forward to it until I saw the ad for it with the black guy in it, and in a second I knew that my worst fears would be realised, that this would be a blatant piece of multi culti propaganda pushing the whole “black people have always been here” line.
Lefties and BAME people love to attack white people for cultural appropriation but what the hell is this? the earliest known piece of English literature hijacked shamelessly to push left wing dogma, I look forward to seeing the movie about King Shaka of the Zulu`s with loads of white men among the ranks of Zulu warriors.
I’m a bit of a leftie, or what’s left of one. Have just watched the trailer for this alleged version of Beowulf, and to describe it as vile cascades of excrement would be to err on the positive side.
Hollywood Vikings, regurgitated LOTR film tricks and a sense of having stumbled upon the Jeremy Kyle Show by mistake were my first impressions, and that is before considering the preposterous racial uber tokenism. It appeared to have little connection with the translation I have read.
I’d have had it made in the original language with subtitles, and with an indigenous looking and sounding cast.
Scandinavians look pretty good at making television shows these days, maybe it’s time to reinstate The Danelaw?