The Last Kingdom showrunner on the challenges of adaptation

Stephen Butchard served as the showrunner and head writer on Netflix’s medieval drama The Last Kingdom for its first three seasons. With season 4 recently landing on Netflix, Butchard talked with us about all things Uhtred, what he wished he could have included but couldn’t, how he went about adapting Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories novels, and more.

But first up, Butchard addressed his departure from the show after three successful seasons, or “series,” as they say in the United Kingdom.

"It was my choice. I’d done three seasons, and it’s a show that I absolutely love, really, really love. But after 26 episodes of writing something, for me we were kind of coming to an end of an era, with the Alfred and Uhtred relationships, being heavily invested in that. So I thought is this the right time, to step down with a new cast coming in. Yeah. It was the easiest time and the most convenient time to to break from the project. Because it was a perfect time for someone new to come in with new faces coming in for season 4 and take it from there. I absolutely loved doing the show, really did and it was fantastic people I was working with, the cast and the crew and the people at Carnival Productions, Nigel Marchant, the executive producer with me. Just  fantastic people. So it was just a lovely, lovely experience. I just felt as though it was the right time for me to take a step back."

Considering all the new faces in season 4, Butchard makes a solid point about it marking a good time to step away.

Returning to the start, Butchard also detailed how the series got off the ground. “I was asked to look at the very first book, The Last Kingdom with a view to adapting it. To be honest, the story had me from the blurb on the back of the book when it talked about a boy who was raised as a Saxon and then kidnapped by the Danes, so he was caught between two worlds. And I just thought that was such a fantastic premise. Then when you overlay the religious aspects, and the war aspects and territories, and it was such an important part of history for the United Kingdom because the Danes invasion has left so much behind. My hometown has a Danish name. That was really important to us from the beginning, and then it was really up to me to decide how we approach the show. I read the next book, and we decided then, to base the first series on the first two books. They kind of seem to be a complete series.”

So Butchard had a plan. But adapting Cornwell’s epic novels presented challenges. “I do think because the books are so expansive, it was finding a through line, a focal point, really. So for the first series, for instance, I kind of knew within the first episode, you know, we had to make Uhtred a man. In book one, for a large portion of book one, he’s a boy, right? We needed to make him a man. We need to establish the premise of the whole show; that he’s an outsider from the off. Uhtred is neither Saxon nor Dane, so that had to be very much in the first episode. But there was so many stories of when was a boy, it was finding how can we bring some of them into his story as a man? So we did our best to bring it it, and in many ways, that also led to us needing the second book as well to to to give us depth for series 1.”

And there are plenty of characters besides Uhtred to deal with, as well. What do you do with this massive a cast?

"I was choosing which characters to develop fully. If you’ve read the books, you’ll know that it’s all told from Uhtred’s point of view. So you always hear Uhtred’s point of view of a character, for instance, with Alfred he says many times how much he hates other kinds of people. What we need is, we need to understand that from Alfred. So it’s working on each character and seeing from somebody else’s point of view, building a picture of those characters. That was kind of a challenge with Alfred, doing a little research. He was such a fascinating man. The fact he went to Rome at the age of four, he was very god-fearing. And also so progressive as well. You know, he always felt like people cannot progress while there’s a war going on. You need peace time really to make progressions of society. So bringing all of them into it. I felt that was key, that we had very much each character was three-dimensional."

Butchard also talked about how much Bernard Cornwell himself was involved in the series. “Bernie was fantastic. He said if I ever needed him, he was there. And he just said, ‘You know, my books will always be there. Television is very different from books. So do what you think you need to do, you know, to make the best television show’. And that was it. He really didn’t want to see any scripts because he wanted to be surprised himself when watching the show, he wanted it to be the first time he saw it. He came to see the first screening, and he was always, always very supportive…Fantastic guy.”

Butchard continued to adapt two novels per season after that, and his successor continued with that approach for season 4. “If you look at it, at the storyline of the novel, we will break down each novel and we’ll have all the broken down into maybe 10 pages, with the key points,” he explained. “Key points that want to keep, or maybe lose them. That’s when you think about the characters, because it only works if you tell a story through the characters. They have to take us by the hand and lead us through. We want to feel everything. The most important thing for me is that the audience feels things. If it’s a character taking you through the story, you will feel it more. You’ll feel it from the emotional truth of each character and each sentence is really important.”

"You break down by individuals. You’ve got the overall journey of the books, then we look at each character, where are they in those books?  And you say, well, what are the big main events? And then you try and place them in certain areas. But all the time it’s very fluid, it’s very fluid. You know, we might start thinking  that’s going to be episode 1 and this is episode 2. But then suddenly you say, well, hold on, this isn’t quite working here. So we need to steal a bit of that from episode 2, or the other way around. I’m already halfway through episode 1, and this feels good, it’s on point. So we’ll push that back a little bit, it’s very much like a work in progress. What I tended to do was I would write maybe the first three or four episodes of the series myself just to get things right and in line. It’s that process of we look at the whole story, is there a single line we want to take? And then you break it down into the individuals."

So it’s a very elastic, give-and-take kind of process, and not as easy as it sounds. Season 3 was especially difficult to adapt, with a lot of new locations and major character deaths to deal with. “Uhtred went over to  Norway, he went to Scotlanda and Wales,” Butchard remembered. “All while Alfred was very much dying, and we wanted to be in Winchester as much as possible. So you kinda had to think hard. We discarded a good amount of the book. And also, we knew that Ragnar died between books. So as soon as I got to that I knew, that can’t happen.”

"It was Uhtred’s brother, with them having been through so much, with them having avenged their father together. I would have felt really cheated, so it had to be on the screen. For me and for the audience as well. Ragnar is an important character, and he means so much to people as well, he meant so much to Uhtred. It can’t have an impact if he just hears about a death, he’s too important a character. And also, you think about the practicalities. [Tobias Santlemann] is such a wonderful actor, and a wonderful presence on the screen. You’re not gonna throw that away. I began to think, okay, well, he’s going to die on the screen, how could we make the most of that? …And that story is kind of one that I invented, which was with him dying without the sword in his hand."

The deaths of both Ragnar and Alfred affected Uhtred profoundly, and Butchard made sure to put them in the forefront of the story. “I knew with Alfred’s death, I knew I wanted a mini-play between Alfred and Uhtred, which is the beginning of episode 9 of series 3, just the two of them together. I really wanted to be bold with that and just have the two of them talking to each other because they were the same, two sides of the same coin in a way for me. They were bonded all the way through.”

Of course, changing things like the manner of Ragnar’s death can have ripple effects down the line, something Butchard was always aware of.

"You’re always looking to sow seeds for the next season, but you’re also looking that you don’t cause the next season problems that cannot be resolved. It’s about truth. It’s about reality. You want it to be dramatic, not melodramatic. And if you paint characters into a corner and then suddenly they change personality or do something to get out of something that they would not escape. You’d be found out. You’d be found out. So you keep half an eye on what what lies ahead. In series 3 we’re trying to settle the children, Edward’s children. We knew that they were pulling at a real point in history as well with Athelstan. So they have some presence, we need to see them. Even if it’s just a few scenes, they need to have a presence now so they will work better in the next season. Your main job is, of course, making each of the seasons as good as can possibly be. But also, you have a responsibility to the next season as well."

Butchard thought long and hard about how changes he made affected all of the characters, including Alfred’s imperious wife Aelswith (Eliza Butterworth). “So with Aelswith, Uhtred has come back to Winchester, right? He’ an outlaw, and by rights, he should be killed. But Alfred has this real bond with him, he trusts him. As Alfred says in episode nine, he would not be king without Uhtred. Alfred knows he stood on the shoulders of Uhtred. So because of the relationship between Alfred and Uhtred, Aelswith sees that as a threat. So she began to change slightly, for the first time she was going against her husband. But then again, she’s keeping true to herself, and her faith and her belief that England couldn’t have a pagan influence because it was going against God. So she began to change slightly, she began to grow. It made for more drama really as well. We could either have her sit back and accept things or we could have her doing this. And her doing this and changing slightly was more interesting than having her sit back and do nothing. But it was also truthful. There were reasons. It was solid reasons for why she was doing what she was doing.”

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

And as with Tobias Santlemann as Ragnar, Butterworth’s performance played a part in giving her character more to do. “It’s also the practical thing when we have an actress like Eliza. I know she can do it. So why not? Everything is truthful about it. So let’s go with that. Again, that’s where Bernard Cornwell is great,  because he’s happy to see that happen. Because the books are the books. And the show is the show.”

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