I was getting a bit worried for Kit Harington, career-wise. He seems like such an earnest fellow, and of course he isn’t exactly suffering: he’s young but he’ll die a rich man if he doesn’t blow all the money he’s earned on Game of Thrones, and it looks like he’s found true love with costar Rose Leslie (Ygritte). My concern was for the quality of his extracurricular projects outside of Thrones. Pompeii and Seven Days in Hell were disastrously bad, and while Brimstone and MI-5 were at least watchable, they were underwhelming. So I’m thrilled to report that Harington has escaped his sophomore jinx by taking a risk and pursuing a story he’s passionate about in the mini-series Gunpowder.
Gunpowder tells the story of the infamous Gunpowder plot, a failed 1605 assassination attempt on the life of the protestant King James I of England, whom conspirators intended to kill by blowing up the House of Lords while he was in attendance. Harington is a maternal descendant of mastermind Robert Catesby, a man whose essential role in the conspiracy has been obscured by the vagaries of history and overshadowed by the infamous Guy Fawkes. Harington and his Thriker films partner Daniel West came up with the idea for Gunpowder and co-produced the historical fiction series with the Kudo production company for BBC One.
Gunpowder: Thomas Wintour, Robert Catesby – Photographer: Robert Viglaski
For Gunpowder, Harington wanted to play someone distinct from Jon Snow. “I love my character in Game of Thrones,” he told The Telegraph, “but he’s a pretty solid person and I wanted to do something a bit different from that. Catesby is someone who is doing something really, really bad, but he thinks it’s right and there’s a fanaticism to that, which I enjoy.”
The result is a darned good show. Episode 1 orients us in time and space, introduces most of the major players, highlights the hallmark terrors of government-sanctioned repression and establishes the motivations behind one of the most infamous assassination attempts in British history.
Below is the review. OBVIOUSLY, IT CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Gunpowder opens with a quick history lesson before spotlighting the increasingly violent persecution of the English Catholics by their Protestant masters. When Catesby, Anne Vaux (Liv Tyler), Lady Dibdale (Sian Webber), Jesuit Father Henry Garnet (Peter Mullan) and the youthful Father Daniel Smith (Thom Ashley) are participating in a covert Catholic mass on Dibdale’s private estate, they are warned of the arrival of the diabolical Sir William Wade (Shaun Dooley) and a force of armed men loyal to the King. The Jesuit priests and articles of the mass are concealed in the mansion’s secret hideaways, but Wade already knows who is there. The intensity doesn’t let up as Catesby, Vaux and Dibdale stand helpless in enraged submission while Wade’s men tear the house apart. The clever and thorough Wade manages to uncover Smith’s hiding spot, implicating Lady Dibdale in the process.
We then meet the Secretary of State, Lord Robert Cecil (Thrones veteran Mark Gatiss), a man King James I (Derek Riddell) calls his ‘cankered beagle,’ due to a condition that keeps his head cocked to the left. Lord Cecil is obsessed with Papist assassins. King James is currently in negotiations with the Catholic King of Spain, so he doesn’t wish to antagonize the Spanish by openly persecuting Catholics in England. Cecil worries that King James is vastly underestimating the “grave and immediate” threat to his life, considering there have already been several previous assassination attempts.
Next comes the somewhat controversial torture sequence in a public square, orchestrated by Wade, where Lady Dibdale refuses to confess to aiding and abetting a Jesuit Priest in her home and is convicted of treason. Dibdale’s punishment is to be crushed under a weighted door, while Smith is drawn and quartered for his transgressions. The visuals are gory but not over the top, and historically accurate in their brutality. It’s nothing more than a regular bloody day at the office for Thrones fans. The scenes were actually less gratuitous than I had anticipated, considering how much they had already been discussed.
Catesby collects what is left of Smith for a proper Catholic burial, saying that both the boy and Dibdale “will be revenged.” His resentment boils as he and his fellow Catholics are abused, their livelihoods and wealth stolen by outrageous fines. “I am humiliated, despised and impoverished,” he says. “I am a desperate man.” After being jailed with his cousin Thomas Wintour (Edward Holcroft) until the fines are paid by the industrious and loyal Vaux, Catesby states that he shall never allow himself to be imprisoned again.
Mark Gatiss as Lord Cecil in Gunpowder
Meanwhile, Cecil secretly recruits a condemned soldier, Captain William Turner (Fergus O’Donnell) from the London prisons, provides him cover and sends him on a mission to infiltrate an underground Papist organization in Flanders (a “haven of escaped British Catholics”) he believes is masterminding the resistance in England. Once Turner arrives in Flanders, he is murdered by the mysterious ex-soldier Guy Fawkes (Tom Cullen).
In London, Catesby is now convinced that the only way to resist is to strike back with “tumult.” Acting against the pacifist wishes of his friend, Father Garnet, Catesby recruits Wintour and Jack Wright (Luke Neal) as he hatches his plan to destroy King James and his entire government in one fell swoop. “We need to strike at the root, Tom,” he tells Wintour. “The nature of the disease requires so sharp a remedy. In that Parliament have they done us all this mischief; perhaps God has designed that place for their punishment.”
Gunpowder – Robert Catesby (KIT HARINGTON), Thomas Wintour (EDWARD HOLCROFT), Faulkes (TOM CULLEN) – (C) Kudos – Photographer: Robert Viglaski
The first episode sets up the real action to come in the following two installments, and it shines. Yes, it gets a bit slow in places, but writer Ronan Bennett’s delicious dialogue and J. Blakeson’s smooth, unobtrusive direction maintain the tension and keep you hooked. The cinematography is sumptuous, both in the grubby alleyways of London and the royal extravagances of the King’s apartments.
Gunpowder probably didn’t have a monster budget, so many of the establishing shots are actually quite narrow, and a good chunk of the show is filmed in tightly framed shots and closeups. It’s a good tactic, because it both enriches the smaller spaces and makes the story feel more intimate, a good match for a tale about conspirators who live in a world of whispers. It’s so well-done that you’ll come away feeling like you saw a much wider visual canvas than you actually did.
Gunpowder Guy Fawkes (Tom Cullen) – Photographer: Robert Viglaski
Most everything about Gunpowder — the cinematography, the writing, the acting — gives you the meat and potatoes you want from this kind of story. There’s plenty of darkness, flickering candles and simmering tension. Harington is in his element as a brooding, desperate man with darkness in his soul, and Gatiss plays his intelligent and conniving master-of-spies with aplomb. Liv Tyler brings vulnerability and courage to Vaux, and — oh, my goodness — while Guy Fawkes is onscreen for a only few moments, but Cullen plays him with such unbalanced menace that I’m looking forward to watching him again as much as anything else.
Some viewers already know the history of the Gunpowder plot and how it all ends, and that fact isn’t lost on Harington and company. Gunpowder focuses on and revels in the motivations of its characters and the sturm und drang of their tortured journeys. With two more episodes to go, I’m ready for the ride.
Gunpowder, “Episode 2” airs tonight (December 19). “Episode 3” airs tomorrow night (December 20), both at 10:00 p.m. EST on HBO. You can watch the BBC ONE first look teaser trailer for Episode Two below:
Looks promising.
Next: Our review of Gunpowder, Episode 2
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