The new TV season heats up in earnest next week... but here's the fall kickoff: FX's The Bastard Executioner. Created by Sons of Anarchy's Kurt Sutter, Bastard Executioner tells the tale of former warrior Wilkin Brattle, who vows to put down his sword and live a life of peace. Well, that doesn't work out so well, and so instead he begins wandering the 14th century Welsh countryside as a traveling executioner. So far the reviews are... well, mostly terrible... but The Bastard Executioner might be your bag if you're into loads of Game of Thrones' style violence. (Did you really expect anything else from the not-so-subtle Kyle Sutter?) Check out some snippets from early reviews:
A sampling of prominent images in the first three hours of “The Bastard Executioner”: a spear slowly penetrating a throat; a dagger entering the back of a head and exiting, dripping, through the mouth; a finger with its nail pulled off; a disemboweled woman; a severed nose, and the severing thereof; a bird feasting on a corpse’s innards; sundry slit throats; a soiled chamber pot rag.Too much? Then you can probably rule yourself out as a fan of this grim, lumbering saga of vengeance and exsanguination in 14th-century Wales....
Bastard Executioner is a very welcome new direction for both Sutter and FX, bringing a meaty swords-and-castles epic to a channel that recently found success with horror and has the creative disposition to go beyond its comfort zone.
The early part of the premiere is a slog, with too much exposition and not enough intrigue, except for the disorientating first scene. It’s brightly lit, men are being slain all over the place, there’s a woman’s glowing butt, and the aforementioned lizard-dragon-thing peels itself from a man’s skin and flies away. It’s bewildering, but The Bastard Executioner is at its best when it’s weird, and should be more often. Otherwise, it’s just stuffy language and familiar sets.
Bastard Executioner has all the sensationalistic blood and guts, breasts and butts, egregious beards and existential bleakness you’d expect from the genre. But as the latest expression of Epic TV, it’s a lightweight Game of Thrones, and sluggish one at that. There’s promise, but for now, the rewards are few, and even then, I worry.
The problem with Sutter’s ultra-violent approach is that, in a post-Red Wedding world, viewers quickly acclimate to non-stop brutality. The third episode, which begins to take on the momentum not seen in the two-hour premiere, features one of 2015’s most repugnant scenes of television violence. It’s the kind of material that would quickly become unwatchable without emotionally detaching from it, and there’s a major disconnect when, after only three episodes, the audience is unfazed by the horrific actions that fill Brattle with dread.
But what do stupid reviewers know?? (Maybe a lot?) Check out The Bastard Executioner, premiering tonight on FX at 10 pm. And here's the trailer, too!