In the two-hour series premiere tonight, Ian McShane plays a king in an alternate-history version of the U.S., with a younger fellow to deal with in a sort of David-and-Goliath story.
It sounds interesting to me. Are you going to check it out?
I’ll be gone and will miss it but hope it will re-air or I can catch it online. I love Ian McShane and it looks like a similar role as his in Deadwood.
Ian McShane used to play the “cheeky chap you love” sort of role, but has nicely matured into “Ruthless Bastard You Love”.
It looks promising, but will most probably end-up as a badly written soap like most in that time slot.
I’m TiVoing it.
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal didn’t seem to like it very much. I’ll have to wait to see what the Onion Av Club thinks- they tend to like the things the big papers hate, and visa-versa.
I just turned it off partway through. It was boring.
The alternate history stuff had potential to be interesting, but it was just a bunch of soap-opera-ey glurge and overblown scenery chewing.
I missed the first 30 minutes because of the Simpsons. (I wasn’t really planning on watching Kings.) But I checked it out. I thought, from the ads, that it was “a king in an alternate-history version of the U.S.”, and that the blond kid was his son. Turns out that the blonde kid is named David Shepherd, did something heroic, and has 7 older brothers. There is an advisor named “Samuel”, who has some problems with the king. The king has a son called “Jack”, and a daughter that the David likes.
This isn’t “sort of David-and-Goliath story”, it’s very much a modern retelling of the David-Jonathan-Saul story from the Old Testament.
Was this advertised in any of the trailers? Because I didn’t get that impression from the ads that I saw.
Come to think of it, the name is misleading; the source material isn’t from Kings, it’s from Samuel.
To use an internet cliche…
+1
I still have it on, mostly because there is promise that, unlike a show such as The OC, the intrigues are more than “you made out with my boyfriend,” …so far. They could be interesting if the writers aren’t afraid to explore. Such as the King effectively being placed on his throne courtesy of a massive defense contractor; a peace treaty between this homeland and [del]Eastasia[/del] whomever-the-enemy-is threatens the profits of the contractor, which subsequently strongarms him into continuing the war despite the peace treaty.
It was never advertised as an adaptation as far as I saw. I just happened to read somewhere online that it was. And since I have a weird fascination with adaptations, I’ve been glued to it.
I like it and I’m not sure why.
Both my wife and I liked it (Which is odd). It had enough soapy elements to keep her interested, and political intrigue for me.
I loved it. I’m just not sure if it was because it was actually good, (tho Ian McShane can recite the hell out of those biblical-sounding speeches) or just because it’s so different.
In a TV landscape full of crime procedurals and reality fare (including, quite bizarrely, Kings’ lead-out, Celebrity Apprentice shudder) this is like nothing else on. A talented, incredibly multi-cultural cast performing a modern-day retelling of a Bible story of love, power, jealousy, treachery and death? I can’t believe NBC actually greenlit it to begin with, so I figure the least I can do is support the show by watching it til the network realizes what it did and pulls the plug.
A drama not about some quirky male crime solver, his by the book uptight female partner and resultant sexual tension? Re imagined classical themes? Da hell?
It’s different and willing to be so. I’ll give it a few more eps. I don’t know how long it can maintain a decent story- season, season and a half?
I liked it well enough, I suppose, although I thought there was going to be more backstory on how the kingdom came to be rather than it’s just an alternate reality. I thought the lack of security around the king and his family was kind of odd. Also, none of the characters or dialog were terribly compelling but I did like the general thrust of the story.
Looks like they shot a lot of it in NYC and environs so NBC must have laid out some $$ for it.
I liked it. Ian McShane is always fun to watch, and the show has an interesting look.
Can we tell yet whether this is an alternate history of our world, or an entirely fictional one? Very few if any hints were given that linked the setting to real life. A composer was mentioned in the scene with the piano, but I couldn’t tell you whether or not it was the name of a real-life composer. Their 1800s sound like the not-too-distant past to them, much like ours are to us. Otherwise, the world seemed like something out of a game of Civilization; the building blocks are the same, but it’s an entirely different world.
I watched the first hour and then gave up. The story was moving too slow to hold my interest.
Franz Liszt, a Hungarian composer, very much real in our world.
I thought it was a mildly interesting premise, and I’ve always wondered why David didn’t get more modern retellings. Though I kind of wonder if he’ll get the chance to weep for Absalom, which would require a lot of aging and a significant shift of a major character in a series, which pretty much never happens on TV.
Other allusions —
His mother is ‘Jessie’ [David’s father was Jesse]
The enemy country is ‘Gath’ [one of the Philistine cities, which was also where Goliath was from].
Rev. Samuels touched David’s head when they first met [Samuel anointed David]
When he first comes to see the king, Jack tells him he’ll get a suit tailored for him. [King Saul has a suit of armor made for David to fight Goliath; David didn’t wear it, though]
And, of course, the king’s son is Jack, and he’s secretly gay [Saul’s son was Jonathan and there’s the whole’Were David and Jonathan lovers’ controversy] and his daughter, who David falls in love with, is Michelle [Saul’s daughter, who David maried, was Michal] The royal family’s last name is “Benjamin”, and Saul was a member of the tribe of Benjamin. The head of the royal army is General Abner [Abner was the name of Saul’s general]
It takes place in the kingdom of Gilboa [Saul was killed in battle with the Philistines at Mt. Gilboa] Its capital is Shiloh [which was the religious capital of ancient Israel, although not Saul’s royal capital.]
I missed almost the whole first hour, having forgotten that it would be on. I really liked what I did see, though. Part of it is just hey! Ian McShane! He’s very compelling, and absolutely believable as a leader, and not just in name.
From what I saw, this show has great potential. I’ll be tuning into the next episode.