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Year: 2017
Category: Historical Period Drama.
Director: J Blakeson.
Cast: Kit Harington, Liv Tyler, Peter Mullan, Mark Gatiss, Tom Cullen, Edward Holcroft, David Bamber, Shaun Dooley, Derek Riddell, Kevin Eldon, Robert Emms, Luke Neal, Richard Douglas, Pedro Casablanc, Jason Redshaw, Sian Webber.
Series with 3 episodes set in London in the year 1605 that tells the story of activist Guy Fawkes and a group of rebels, who will try to blow up the House of Commons and kill King James I in England.
In 1605, during the first years of the government of James I in England, English Catholics are oppressed and tortured by the government to death, and Spain, protector of Catholics in England, is not able to stop the abuses perpetrated by the Government of England, something that incite Robert Catesby, an English Catholic, to organize a coup against the crown, murdering the king to put his daughter Elizabeth in his place, and to achieve his goal will have the help of the famous Guy Fawkes and other English Catholics.
This is a series that in only 3 episodes introduces us to the Gunpowder Plot, those years in which Christians were fighting each other and religious intolerance was very strong in Europe. The beginning of James as the ruler of England, despite having years of experience governing Scotland, was not the best, his struggle against Catholicism hindered his relations with Spain, with whom he wished to maintain peace, then, Robert Catesby, his family, his friends and those other Catholics with whom he shared faith, were not having a great time under the new monarch's government, so he decides to take a decision that will put at risk everything he wants to protect.
J Blakeson, the director, who previously directed the films The Disappearance of Alice Creed and The 5th Wave, and two shorts films; Pitch Perfect and The Appointment, does a moderately acceptable job here, maybe his biggest problem is that he does not get the rhythm indicated for the transition of some moments of the story and that he does not achieve a better execution of the few action scenes that the history has.
The screenwriter, Ronan Bennett, writer of books like The Second Prison, Overthrown by Strangers, The Catastrophist, Havoc, in Its Third Year, Zugzwang and some others; besides writing the scripts of the films A Further Gesture, aka The Break, Lucky Break, Face, The Hamburg Cell and Public Enemies; not to mention his other works for television; Love Lies Bleeding, A Man You Do not Meet Every Day, Rebel Heart, Fields of Gold, Hidden, Top Boy and a short film: Do Armed Robbers Have Love Affairs?; he does a moderately acceptable job, I do not know enough about the historical events related in the series to judge the historical veracity of his work, however, I can criticize the fact that Bennett decided not to add two elements to the story, that even though are not necessary historically and narratively, surely would have made the series more interesting and entertaining, and I mean that the series lacked action scenes, especially considering the story they are narrating, and it would have been interesting if he introduced a couple of fictional characters with more attractive alternative histories but without altering historical events, as happens with Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus in the Rome series or in Chernobyl.
The acting work is not bad, although it is not excellent either, although Kit Harington is one of the creators of the show and plays Robert Catesby, I think Mark Gatiss as Robert Cecil is the one who plays a really interesting role, Peter Mullan has an important role from the narrative point of view, but too much importance is given to a character who does not contribute much to the general story, Liv Tyler acts great, but as with the character of Peter Mullan, the protagonism of her character not correspond to the narrative importance she has in the story. Tom Cullen who plays Guy Fawkes, has a modest participation. The other actors do an acceptable job but nothing special.
The strong point of the series is the setting, the costumes and the character played by Mark Gatiss, I think basically those are the only things that kept my attention during the three episodes, on the other hand, I think the biggest flaw in the series is not have the indicated budget, something that did not allow to develop better action scenes or create alternative plots, I suppose that hiring those actors consumed the entire budget.
If you like period series, with good costumes and excellent scenarios, and you can ignore the lack of budget to make a decent action scene, then you may like Gunpowder but without generating much desire to continue with the story until the end.
