Despite lots of action, “Knightfall” stumbles out of the gate
Many Game of Thrones fans, including myself, have been waiting for Knightfall with high expectations. We’ve hoped that, with the successful Vikings series under it’s belt, History would be able to produce a new medieval historical fiction series with characters, drama and depth akin to Thrones, or at least engaging enough to keep us reasonably entertained during the long wait for season 8. Their subject matter is certainly promising: the Crusades, Knights Templar, the search for the Holy Grail and a bloody betrayal by the King of France.
History’s webpage describes the Knights Templar as “the most powerful, wealthy and mysterious military order of the Middle Ages, entrusted with protecting Christianity’s most prized relic—the Holy Grail—and harboring secrets capable of great destruction.”
Unfortunately, TV show lightning rarely strikes twice, and the Knightfall premiere, while watchable, doesn’t live up to its potential. Here is the straight skinny, SPOILERS included, on Wednesday’s premiere episode, “You’d Know What To Do.”
The episode begins at the Siege of Acre in 1291, when the Crusader veteran and Templar hero, Landry (Tom Cullen) and his brotherhood attempt to defend the last Christian stronghold left in the Holy Land. Writers Don Handfield and Richard Rayner are tasked with delivering a lot of exposition quickly, and they do a decent job of it without slowing down the pace. As the episode’s epic showpiece, the opening offers some good (if familiar-looking) CGI shots of fortifications, the surrounding Mamluk armies and fireballs hurtling into the city.
It’s here that “You’d Know What To Do” is at it’s best, when the Crusader cavalry charges into the attackers and the battle descends into a chaos of swinging swords, falling horses and clouds of desert dust. Director Douglas Mackinnon (Doctor Who, Outlander) continually cuts to extreme, claustrophobic closeup of the characters from inside their helmets as they shout at each other during the fight. I couldn’t decide if this was a great artistic idea or a way to cheap out on production costs, but I’m pretty sure I think it was a cool perspective, especially because there’s no way to tell the Templars apart with their great helms on.
With the battle lost, the Master Templar Godfrey (Sam Hazeldine) orders Landry and his closest Templar brothers Tancrede (Simon Merrells) and Gawain (Padraic Delaney) to retrieve the Holy Grail and escape the city by sea. Landry and company fight their way to the Acre docks and load the Grail onto the main Templar vessel, but when Landry puts the entire endeavor in jeopardy by turning back to save a man and his daughter from slaughter by the victorious Mamluks, he and his friends are forced to board a secondary boat departing the port.* A fireball strikes the lead Templar ship and it goes to the bottom of the Mediterranean, taking the Grail with it.
It’s here, as the scene slows down to allow the shock and awe of the bereaved Templars to soak in, that the wooden dialogue takes over, and it will continue to plague the episode all the way to the end.
Fade to black, and the story jumps forward in time to 1307 Paris. Landry and his fellow Templars live comfortably in their massive Paris Temple, praying and dealing with money-lending matters related to the fortune the Order amassed during the Crusades. Landry is tortured by the belief that both he and his beloved Order have lost their way, asking “What are we for?” They are monk-warriors, and they should be crusading to win back the Holy Land.
Even more so than the brothers of the Night’s Watch, the Knights Templar have taken an ironclad vow of chastity, but that doesn’t stop Landry from carrying on a passionate affair with a mysterious Lady in Green (Olivia Ross). Landry is also friends with money-strapped King Philip IV of France (Ed Stoppard), a royal who struggles with the Machiavellian advice of his dark counselor, William de Nogaret (Julian Ovenden), a conniving villain with a special dislike for the wealthy Templars.
Godfrey is murdered by highwaymen while heading to a secret rendezvous, and Landry is installed as the acting Master Templar. In his dying moments, Godfrey gave his sword to a young peasant named Parsifal (Bobby Schofield), with the instructions to take it to Landry, who will know what to do with it. “God’s kingdom depends on it,” he added, ominously. Landry actually has no idea what to do with it, and orders an underling to clean the sword before it is interred with Godfrey’s body.
When a persecuted Jew murders a Christian hatemonger, Paris is on the verge of an antisemitic riot, so the counselor de Nogaret convinces KIng Philip to have the Jews evacuated from the city. Unbeknownst to the King, de Nogaret secretly orders his thug lieutenant to rob and murder all of the Jews once they are vulnerable on the road outside the city. They are overheard by an eavesdropping Lady in Green, apparently a denizen of the royal castle. She immediately hurries to inform Landry of de Nogaret’s dastardly plan.
Although the Templars are sworn to remain neutral in politics, Landry leads his Templars to rescue the Jewish civilian column just in the nick of time, defeating the thug army sent to destroy them. The episode ends with King Philip expressing raging to de Nogaret about the attack on the Jewish column, and then attending a ceremony with his Queen Joan, who turns out to be Landry’s Lady in Green. Meanwhile, the Templar underling cleaning Godfrey’s sword discovers a secret compartment in the pommel containing a blue bauble that, once installed in a brazier, illuminates a pattern showing a symbol of the Grail with a fleur-de-lis in the center, which Landry interprets as meaning that the Holy Grail is somehow now in France.
With all of its potential for drama and intrigue, “You’d Know What To Do” comes off as largely plodding and flat. It feels more like a standard network by-the-numbers show than a deeper-cutting cable network offering, and it gets considerably less naked, complex and gory than Game of Thrones (although there are a couple of graphic sword-through-the-head shots worthy of HBO). The Landry-and-Queen Joan love scene is pure PG, generates very little steam and is hamstrung by some of the worst pillow talk dialogue I’ve heard in a while. Compare it to the subtlety of the Jon Snow/Daenerys bedside conversation in “Beyond the Wall” (S7/Ep7), and one wonders if silence might have served the Knightfall scene better. Even the blood in Knightfall doesn’t look real, ranging from the texture of red paint to some preternatural form of Jello.
Tom Cullen is solid as Landry; he has the gravitas and charisma to play a Templar leader. The problem is the story and dialogue give him very little room to maneuver beyond being stalwart and grumpy. In fact, the entirety of Knightfall‘s premiere is hamstrung by one-dimensional, predictable characters moving through a predictable plot. Landry is the good-hearted, self-doubting hero with Templar friends who are near-impossible to tell apart, the king is a confident ruler who has no idea how weak he truly is, and de Nogaret is the classic counselor-villain, so vile it’s a surprise he isn’t always twirling his mustache.
“You’d Know What To Do” also weakens Knightfall‘s big MacGuffin, the plot device that will drive the hero and the story forward, in this case the secret bauble hidden in the pommel of Godfrey’s sword. First, it’s apparently an incredibly simple riddle to figure out, and secondly, having an underling discover it and its purpose really robs the hero Landry of the opportunity to look smarter by discovering the clue about the Grail for himself. Either way, it does set up a quest and a mystery for Landry to follow in future episodes. What was Godfrey up to? Where in France is the Holy Grail and how did it get there?
Knightfall is History’s much anticipated follow-up to its hit show Vikings, but the first episode lacks both the intensity and the uniqueness of its predecessor. History has given Knightfall a big platform, positioning the new Vikings episode as a lead-in and lacing the breaks with Vikings sneak peeks and Easter eggs. Game of Thrones fans will be familiar with the aspects of Knightfall‘s warrior brotherhood, an unfaithful queen and Dubrovnic locations, but that’s where the similarities end.
“You’d Know What To Do” may well suffer from the typical premiere episode problem of trying to cram too much introductory stuff in and watering down the whole effort as a result. The show has stuff going for it, with great locations, wonderful medieval CGI vistas and capable actors ready to tread the boards. But it also feels like a missed opportunity—like there’s an engrossing drama lying just under the surface of the first episode—and the Knightfall series will likely succeed or fail depending on how effectively it can leave behind pat characterizations and by-the-numbers plotting and plunge into that rich vein of dark, unpredictable storytelling ore beneath.
Grade: B-
New episodes of Knightfall air on the History Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m. EST.
Next: Liam Cunningham (Davos) weighs in on Jon and Dany’s incest problem
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*The Acre port scene will look quite familiar to Game of Thrones fans because it was shot at the Dubrovnik jetty where we’ve seen so many Thrones characters arrive and depart from King’s Landing.