Don’t hold it up next to Game of Thrones. When sizing-up Kurt Sutter’s new series The Bastard Executioner, the familiar clang of swords may make it hard to avoid drawing comparisons – but that’s hardly fair, given the unique place Thrones occupies in the pop culture firmament. It’s better to look at Executioner for what it is – the next chapter in the pulpy universe of Sutter’s brand of outlaw standard-bearers.
After seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy, you have to hand it to Sutter, to find the moxie and drive to jump headlong into an even more ambitious serial TV universe, the 14th Century of King Edward III. With opening titles showcasing a stark montage of steely torture equipment, dripping blood, Sutter makes it clear he won’t be shying away from the brutality of the middle ages.
Bastard Executioner is less focused on the familial schemes of Throne-ish aristocrats and more on the oppressive boot heel those in power grind down upon the peasants – in this case, Welsh villagers just trying to live simply and raise families. The plot owes some generous tips of the helm to Braveheart, a film that informs large swaths of Executioner’s inhabitants. The hero is Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones), a former soldier who lay down his sword after a mystical near-death experience on the battlefield. Now he’s found love and looks forward to his lovely wife’s delivery of their first child. Braveheart and Josie Wales fans know where this is headed.
The local Lord of the land, Baron Ventris (Brían F. O'Byrne of Oz) is taxing the locals through the nose, abetted by Stephen Moyer (True Blood) in Sheriff of Nottingham mode. When Wilkin and some aspiring rebels decide to stick it to the Ventris tax collector, the aristocrats respond as expected. Katey Sagal is back in her hubby’s universe, this time as a witch with a Slavic accent that’s full Maria Ouspenskaya in The Wolf Man: “Whoever ees beetin by a Verevolf and leevs, becomes a Verevolf heemself.”
Nearly the entire enterprise rests squarely on the shoulders of Australian newcomer Lee Jones, as Wilkin Brattle – a deliberately named character of the same bodice-ripping evocation as Hell on Wheels’ Cullen Bohannan – those names! Jones is beefy and energetic and has great physicality – his arc in the pilot swings as wildly as his broadsword, and for me, the jury is still out on his acting chops – and where his character’s potential lies given the masquerade role he quickly comes to adopt.
While the pilot is all over the map, it’s never boring. There are frequent moments of genuinely shocking violence, and FX has clearly given Sutter free rein to appeal to the legions of Anarchy fans who they hope will follow him. Sutter has a great sense of pulp, and likes to set up the audience for big reveals, dealing out the plot like a ferocious soap opera. He’s traded one family of outlaws for another, and he’s making no bones about the fact this story is set in a cruel, cruel age. The pilot had its share of clunky moments, but I’m definitely intrigued enough to see what kind of medieval outlawry Sutter has up his bloody sleeves.
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