Small Screen Surfin'
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2003
Oh dear. That's all I can say toward the victim of this week's 'review'. So much so that I can't think of an introduction.
Last Sunday, ITV1 brought you Boudica, and to be honest, I rather liked it. This, however, was not for the right reasons. What was supposed to be an account of the greatest known Celtic warrior, Queen Boudica, was instead a ridiculous farce that was as plausible and accurate as Braveheart was.
The trailers for this drama presented Boudica as a strong woman who, in a patriarchal society, leads tribes up against the might of the Roman Empire. These are the highlights, however, as for almost the entire two hours of the programme she is either telling how much she loves her man or her two daughters. Somehow this programme manages either to be a rip-off of Braveheart or hideously clichéd (All the way down to the battle speech at the finale).
As mentioned we see every cliché in the 'drama' book. The Romans speak with perfect English accents with one of them being camp1, and their superior is even more effeminate! What would have worked would be to either have them speaking in Latin with subtitles or, which would have been more appreciated, starting a sentence in Latin before drifting into English. But no, luckily every ancient Brit speaks Latin or every Roman speaks Celt.
Even better on the cliché plate is the fact that one of Boudica's daughters manages to fall in love with a Roman soldier. Hey! A mis-matched couple, how original!2 The show is a joke from start to finish. You can't help but laugh at the sound when somebody collapses, they make that 'duddle-dumpf' noise you get in sit-coms! Plus in this 'serious' drama we have a druid who actually does magic... and predicts the future.
Language-wise the show insults your intelligence. Why would (the extremely camp and British) Nero say 'For God's sake!' when they have more than one god? This is even more strange when he exclaims that the Celts are worse than the Christians! The script seems to think that modern day morals should be put in Celtic times. Wrong. The Iceni were a warrior race. When they lose someone they care about it makes them angrier plus they see honour in death. They do not spend infinity mourning over the loss like Boudica does throughout. Nicely she states 'I loved him (her husband) for all the days of his life' then gets together with the traditional Rogue-who-doesn't-agree-with-King's-policies-wanting-to-fight-at-all-times Sean Bean-esque character.
To be especially kind on the eye, the show seems to think that it's wrong to show too much decapitation but plenty of adult scenes, like the incest between Nero and his mother, and the rape scene of Boudica's two daughters. Terrible, terrible stuff.
If that wasn't enough, they try to convince you that five children are able to intimidate a group of trained Roman soldiers and are able to cut a man's head off with a 5-inch blade
and hold it up high two seconds after the body hits the floor... The closing battle was disappointing with one big blob of Celts next to a big blob of Romans, the Celts (their blue marking barely noticeable) kind enough to keep hitting their swords into the Roman shields.
On the plus side, the music was good. Quite surprising as it was a series of 'wah's, and the acting was good. My respect goes out to those performers3 for being able to do such work with a bad script.
I can only hope that the upcoming Henry VIII is not just plain wrong like 'Boudica' was. Romantic fantasy nonsense.
Keep Surfin'!
