# Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands



## WaylanderToo (Jan 3, 2016)

just watched pt1 this evening and really enjoyed it (GoT may well have a complaint about the theme tune though ). Anyone else?


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## svalbard (Jan 4, 2016)

I am with you on the theme tune, however, I found the show to be fairly poor. Vikings, The Last Kingdom, GOT have all being top notch shows that I have become used to a certain quality and Beowulf really is off the pace.

What I cannot understand is that they had such rich material to deal with, ie one the greatest epic poems of all time, and then decide to ignore it.

They might as well have called the series Generic Hero with a Beard: Return to Wherever. Then expectations are lowered and who knows it may have being enjoyable.


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## WaylanderToo (Jan 4, 2016)

TBH I didn't have high expectations - it's on ITV and before the watershed so I thought "Atlantis" & suddenly it was good TV


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## svalbard (Jan 4, 2016)

You are right. On pre- watershed, on ITV, the omens were not good. I am sort of hoping that it veres off into so bad it's good territory.


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## anno (Jan 4, 2016)

Absolute bobbins...


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## Nick B (Jan 4, 2016)

Total rubbish. It has nothing to do with Beowulf. It should have been called Burt, Return to the Sadlands.


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## WaylanderToo (Jan 4, 2016)

I did like the sumptuous costume design (yes, yes I know waaaay too clean, and I guess to be totally fair way too ethnically diverse for the period. That's a whole other story I guess though) and the monsters at the start were fun (I'm easily pleased!)


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## svalbard (Jan 11, 2016)

I just watched EP 2. It is awful, but moving onto so bad it's good awful. I will be sticking with it for another while yet. Sigh...


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## Bugg (Jan 11, 2016)

Even I thought it was crap, and that's saying something!


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## Vertigo (Jan 11, 2016)

I managed the first 15 minutes and then couldn't take anymore. Did anyone ales notice the complete absence of blond hair in any of the cast (at least in those first 15 minutes)? Not to mention hairstyles that would, I think, have been virtually impossible with the 'tools' available at the time.


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## Ursa major (Jan 11, 2016)

Vertigo said:


> Did anyone ales notice the complete absence of blond hair in any of the cast (at least in those first 15 minutes)?


I think it's down to the pre-watershed transmission time, and the need for the hero to be above reproach (at least amongst the audience).

So when a producer (or someone in the commissioning team) misheard someone saying that Beowulf was really a big Geat, the premise was changed, with the setting moved to a Dark Ages Britain and the hero becoming the "Shieldland" Beowulf (so not "one of the Swedish Beowolfs"), thus removing any hint that it has anything at all to do with Scandinavia**.  This explains the more-Roman-influenced population (albeit they've done it in a ridiculously inauthentic way).


** - After all, the Wulfings would sound a bit too much like the (pre-Corbynista) Tooting Popular Front, and the last thing ITV wants is to introduce current political events into the story....


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## StuartBurchell (Jan 24, 2016)

Anybody watching ITV's _Beowulf_?

I quite like it and enjoying it.

I will not make any comparisons with any other shows, it is almost always detrimental to a new show.

I knew it was based on an old English poem set before the English left mainland Europe (yep, our English ancestors were unwelcome migrants to Britain), but I was surprised when looking Beowulf up that he was a ruler of a Swedish Geats tribe and that the poem has Beowulf helping a Danish King, Hrofgar (dead before Beowulf even turned up in this version.


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## Dave (Jan 25, 2016)

I saw about 5-10 minutes. It looked like _Eastenders_ with Orcs. I switched channels.


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