The Musketeers

[potentiality_26]

First of all, if any or most or even (heaven forefend) all of you have not seen this show, SEE THIS SHOW. I need to not be alone in this. Go. Behold the pretty.

I'm sticking some commentary under a cut so you can skip it if you want, but I've avoided plot spoilers, so if you want to let me to try to sell you on this show...

The things I loved about it from the start:

The sword fighting. Seriously. I was a fencer for a while as a teenager, and as you might guess from all the nonsense I went through to find fencing classes and fencing equipment and- you know- train and shit, I always loved fencing. And a lot of my old favorite movies- The Princess Bride, The Mask of Zorro, The Great Race, etc- had very good fencing, which stood the test of knowing something about how it works. Later on, Pirates of the Caribbean did too. Other films? Not so much. TV? Almost never. This show has large amounts of fencing- it’s almost gratuitous, frankly, but I completely don’t care- and it’s good. My hat to whoever stages it, because wow.

Aramis and Porthos. In the books and pretty much every adaptation, Aramis is my favorite character and Aramis/Porthos is my ship. Boy does this show deliver on those too fronts, and that was obvious from the very first episode. I love both actors and they have wonderful chemistry, and such a fun relationship.

D’Artagnan’s eyebrows. He’s incredibly cute in general, but if you cut everything and just had d’Artagnan’s eyebrows as he reacts to things, it could easily keep the average person entertained for at least fifteen minutes- maybe even thirty.

All the leather. I’d heard about this, and I was not disappointed.  It too is gratuitous.  And fabulous.  So fabulous.

The things that surprised me:

Pretty much all the other characters. Athos was always the musketeer to whom I was least kindly disposed, and this Athos' intro did not bode well. Somewhere along the way, though, I fell head over heels for this guy. I even look back on that introductory scene that I hated so much and feel nothing but love. And Constance. She’s feisty and beautiful and perfect and I love her. And Milady- oh Milady. She is such a wonderfully constructed/acted character- just the right amount of unabashed sexy evil, just the right amount of actually kind of justified can she get a redemption arc maybe please? Do not bad mouth her in presence, or we must duel with sabers at a time of your choosing. Let’s just stop this here and say I love pretty much everyone except Constance’s shitty husband. He must die.

The episodic set-up. This is always kind of iffy. In most shows, I prefer episodic series to whatever you call a non-episodic series, but with adaptations it’s tricky- Robin Hood was the same way. You have your bad guys in pretty much every episode, and they have to be bad enough for the audience to want them to lose, but pleasant enough that the audience doesn’t want to choke them or themselves before it’s half over. They have to come up with episodic plotlines from somewhere, since they don’t exist in the comparatively more straightforward source material, which can be annoying to purist fans of said source material. Anyway, it’s a tough line to walk and this show walks it awesomely. What’s more, there are a lot of characters and twists from the books that they haven’t used yet, so there’s more for S2.

All the shipping potential OMG. This show will send you to the multi-shipper hell. Or the multi-shipper heaven, depending on how you feel about shipping everyone with everyone else all the time, in various pairings, in OT3s, OT4s and oh-screw-it OT5s, with cause.  


This show is ridiculous, you guys.  But I love it so much.
   

Comments

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

May have to watch it, lol!!

*HUGS*

[potentiality-26.livejournal.com]

:)

[mahmfic.livejournal.com]

Are u talking about the new BBC show? How can I see it? I want to.

[potentiality-26.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I got it through Netflix now that it's out in the US. I'm not sure where else it's available, but it might not be too hard to track down via online sources.

It's really worth checking out.