Classically Abby - The Last Kingdom - Husband VS. Wife SHOW Review! 🎬｜｜ You should DEFINITELY Watch This On Netflix...

00:00:00.040 Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be 1.00

00:00:04.040 doing a review on Netflix's The Last Kingdom.

00:00:12.080 So Jacob and I just recently finished watching the four seasons that are

00:00:16.080 available of The Last Kingdom and we really wanted to talk about it with you

00:00:19.040 guys. So do you want to start us off a little bit? Yeah so in terms of how we

00:00:23.680 decided to watch the show, we'd seen Deadwood seasons 1 through 3, season 1

00:00:28.480 is good avoid seasons 2 and 3 or else you'll understand that production

00:00:32.140 nightmares behind the scenes for a show can make something good in the first

00:00:35.800 season trash season 2 and 3. Not great and I feel really bad because I recommended

00:00:40.840 that earlier in quarantine when we were just in the first season. Just watch season 1.

00:00:44.260 Same thing with Westworld. Just see season 1. Yep. But as you'll see from us

00:00:48.700 talking about Last Kingdom, see all four seasons. Yes. All four seasons. But in

00:00:53.080 terms of how we decided to watch it, it was a lark. I'd been listening on the

00:00:55.900 great courses to a series on Viking history and my wife can attest that I've

00:01:00.880 been on a Viking kick recently. To be fair, I'm just gonna interrupt you to say 0.68

00:01:04.520 that my husband is amazing at history. He knows so much and it was always

00:01:08.780 impressive to me and he always wants to learn more so. You just keep

00:01:11.740 complimenting that guy and we're all gonna start hating him so you probably

00:01:14.860 shouldn't do that. Liked all that Viking history stuff but Viking board games but

00:01:19.120 Viking video games and so I thought ooh we are waiting for a new show to watch why not a

00:01:24.400 Viking show and so I looked up watch Vikings or Last Kingdom because I've been

00:01:28.160 vaguely aware of it. People said Last Kingdom's where the characters are at and

00:01:31.300 they were right. They're so right! So we got in, saw the first episode, loved it, kept

00:01:36.780 rolling through and then it's just been a non-stop The Last Kingdom marathon for

00:01:40.960 the last few weeks. Yeah and it's one of the reasons that quarantine hasn't been so

00:01:44.380 bad is that we've been watching it together. Well that, we've been in Nebraska. The Last Kingdom

00:01:49.000 watching that together during this quarantine has been so much fun. It's so

00:01:53.320 good you guys and I just cannot believe how well it holds up all four seasons.

00:02:00.160 Yes because we have been as we mentioned from Deadwood, as we mentioned from West

00:02:04.540 World and then those of you who have seen Game of Thrones you can attest to the

00:02:07.960 same. A lot of marquee prestige television falls apart as you watch it and

00:02:15.280 every single season of The Last Kingdom has been good, has been consistent

00:02:19.960 quality and we want to keep watching and the characters even, for the most part,

00:02:23.740 are consistent and really fun to watch. We've been burned before when it comes to

00:02:28.300 many times. When it comes to shows getting worse season after season. So this

00:02:33.340 one's been pretty good. Hopefully it keeps up this pace as it keeps going. We'll find out

00:02:37.000 next year because the fourth season was only released in April. Right. So let's get

00:02:41.160 started with the premise of the show. Okay so the premise is we're in 860 AD

00:02:50.580 England, about that time, and for those of you who know this from history, you

00:02:55.000 already know the Vikings have been invading England. For those of you who

00:02:58.160 don't know, awesome, the Vikings invaded the heck out of England. They invaded 1.00

00:03:03.540 Ireland, they invaded Scotland area, just for like a few hundred years there were 0.93

00:03:07.860 ongoing wars between the Vikings coming in from Scandinavia and then the German

00:03:12.400 tribes who had settled there after the fall of Rome, who were the Anglo-Saxons.

00:03:16.240 And so the premise of the show is the Vikings have taken over basically half of

00:03:19.680 the country and our main character as a boy is a nobleman of one of the northern

00:03:25.260 kind of duchies, areas of land in England. His dad's killed, he's taken captive by the

00:03:31.800 Danes and then eventually actually just raised as the son of the guy who took him 0.95

00:03:35.700 captive and so culturally he's a Dane. But he was like 10 or whatever when he got

00:03:41.080 kidnapped so he knows he's a Saxon, he has a right to inheritance of his 0.91

00:03:44.940 father's holdings when he was a kid and so he's caught between two worlds. You're

00:03:48.720 kind of watching his journey going through his struggle between being raised a

00:03:54.180 Dane kind of falling into that category more as a man and being born a Saxon.

00:04:00.020 And so he's constantly struggling with that, moving through the history of England and

00:04:05.980 really how England was established as its own nation, which is pretty cool.

00:04:10.140 An important thing to note for those of you who are not familiar with the history component,

00:04:13.260 England, the one country in that landmass, did not exist yet. You had the Anglo-Saxons as a people

00:04:20.320 with a separate little petty kingdoms, it's called the Heptarchy, there were seven of them at a certain point in time,

00:04:25.420 and so it took a series of Alfred the Great was the monarch, him and his descendants to have the

00:04:32.260 vision of united Anglo-Saxon England as one kingdom, and then successively bringing that to fruition.

00:04:39.300 So this show occurs alongside that and it's like Forrest Gump or a lot of those other historical fiction

00:04:45.220 movies shows where your main character finds himself being hyper important to historical events.

00:04:51.420 Yes. It happened to be that he was not written about, but let it be known, he was there and he did stuff.

00:04:56.820 I do. And the show even directly addresses that. I was going to say, that's one thing in the show that's pretty funny,

00:05:00.340 is that they specifically address, oh, they left him out of history for certain reasons I don't want to give away.

00:05:05.580 We don't want to do spoilers too much in this review, just because this really is more of a, you should watch this.

00:05:10.860 We're trying to convince you. Watch it and then discuss it with us on Twitter.

00:05:14.220 Yes. He was left out of history by one of the characters, and that's why that had to happen.

00:05:21.180 And that's why we don't know him in, you know, the real, the real world.

00:05:24.540 But now you know. But now we know. So you can spread his name.

00:05:27.500 Yeah, which is kind of funny. So moving on to the themes of the show from the premise.

00:05:35.980 What are the themes of the show that we really like that they tackle?

00:05:39.180 So the big thing in the show, the background conflict, it's not just petty dynastic squabbling like a lot of Game of Thrones was.

00:05:46.700 Here you have a nation of people, the Anglo-Saxons, who've been Christianized, and fun fact in history, 0.78

00:05:53.020 it was Irish monks who came over to the pagan Germanic tribes that had invaded England and settled there in like the 400s, 500s, 600s,

00:06:01.420 and converted them to Christianity. So the Irish made the English Christians. 0.99

00:06:05.340 And the English made the Danes Christians. The ones who came. 1.00

00:06:09.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:12.620 So you have the Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and then you have the Vikings who are invading. 0.91

00:06:17.020 The Vikings are pagans, and they are pagans, pagans. And by that I mean you get to see them talk about their gods,

00:06:23.980 you get to see their worship rituals, you get to see their beliefs, you see how their beliefs impact

00:06:28.300 their view on life and death, you see the foreignness of these two cultures. So for whatever reason, 0.99

00:06:34.060 everyone speaks the same language in terms of everyone speaking English, so you never have Dane characters

00:06:39.180 not being intelligible to the English-Saxon characters and vice versa. Okay, but beyond that,

00:06:44.940 the cultures really are foreign to one another. And you see how that, the religion and the culture, 0.73

00:06:51.260 the desire for land, these two peoples cannot readily be accommodated, and they do not want to accommodate 1.00

00:06:56.620 each other, and you get why each one does not want to accommodate each other, and how in their terms

00:07:02.220 they see it, which I really like. Yeah. Because way too much bad modern writing is, well, you know,

00:07:07.900 let's take Game of Thrones. We have a medieval-inspired setting where hypothetically religion would

00:07:12.380 matter, but everyone's basically an atheist, and they'll pay lip service to things, and everyone

00:07:15.980 talks like I'm a millennial, and everybody, no, no, no. People come across like they're in their time

00:07:21.100 and place and in their religion and in their culture, and that is special and is compelling. Yeah,

00:07:25.340 it's a very interesting dynamic where you have the Christians and the Danes who are pagan just

00:07:32.060 constantly at war with each other, both, you know, literally and also, you know, religiously. But

00:07:39.180 the reason this works is not just because it's kind of an overarching thing. Overarching? Overarching?

00:07:45.500 Whatever. You decide. Overarching thing. We'll put up a Twitter poll. Of, of, you know, this is the

00:07:51.420 Christians and the English and these are the Danes and the pagans. It's actually something that

00:07:55.340 plays out between the characters as individuals, and so you're not just seeing it at, you know,

00:07:59.900 throughout the story as kind of something that frames it, but really it gets into the nitty-gritty

00:08:05.260 of the relationships between not just men and women, but also between like Beocca and Uhtred, who you

00:08:11.900 don't know who that is, but just other men between their relationships. So it's, it's really fascinating.

00:08:17.420 Well, one thing this show does very well is that it avoids the trap of coming across like,

00:08:22.620 oh, well there's a difference between Danes and Saxons, Christians and pagans, and so that's a hard

00:08:27.980 line. These people don't intermix, and the only context in which they'd intermix would be conflict.

00:08:33.260 No. Instead, you see how there are Danish pagans who fight for the Saxon side opportunistically,

00:08:39.260 or because they have other interests that align with the English. The English are where,

00:08:43.660 or the Anglo-Saxons, they're not English yet, the Anglo-Saxons are wary of them, but will still 0.98

00:08:48.940 employ them and use them for their own purposes. The conflict is still there, but it's not literally

00:08:54.300 the only thing that goes on at any time, and vice versa. You have Saxons who will work to help Danes, 0.95

00:08:59.020 because they have their own opportunistic things. These people are different, the broad conflict is

00:09:03.180 there for a reason, but also life is more complicated than that. So it doesn't diminish the conflict,

00:09:08.860 but it also doesn't make it unrealistically the only factor in play. Much like real life,

00:09:14.540 the differences between people in terms of culture, everything else, really, really matter,

00:09:19.420 but also they're contextual, and it really matters what you're discussing at any given point in time

00:09:23.500 for whether or not people will work together or be enemies. Yeah, and I think another two themes,

00:09:28.860 I think, that also play throughout the show is the idea of destiny, and how, well, sorry, there's a tagline

00:09:36.060 in the show. If you watch it on Netflix, and you do not skip the intro, you're going to get a recap

00:09:40.780 every episode. Yes, that's true. The show is intelligently written. It would be for an

00:09:44.860 audience that can follow along. It's not a very, very highbrow show that's hard to follow along,

00:09:48.460 but it's a smart show. They say in the beginning, every single episode, the main character narrates

00:09:55.580 this absolutely condescending recap. It is really funny. Like, oh, this is exactly what happened,

00:10:02.140 and says slowly. Yes. And then at the end of every recap, he says, destiny is all. Oh my goodness,

00:10:13.340 it's too much. The idea of and the theme of the pagans depending on destiny and the Christians 0.71

00:10:20.060 depending on choices. Depending on choices and also divine providence. Yes. And so the Christians are 0.99

00:10:25.020 caught between the two. Right. They think everything's in God's hands, but it's on them to be worthy of

00:10:29.980 divine providence. Yeah, exactly. And it's very different. Again, it's that religious thing,

00:10:34.700 but it's just a more specific version of it. Yes, you can have some of my seltzer.

00:10:38.620 Enjoy it. And then the third thing I was thinking about with this show and the themes of it,

00:10:45.260 I think would be the family structures and the kind of inheritance, because the main character has that

00:10:52.140 inheritance to the land that he so wants. In the north of England. In the north of England,

00:10:56.300 and then you also have, you know, Alfred the king who and his family... Oh, we've established him.

00:11:00.860 Yes. So the kind of the foil for most of the show is Alfred and Uhtred. Uhtred being this Dane that 0.99

00:11:07.100 we've been talking about and Alfred being the king and who's trying to create England. And so Uhtred and

00:11:14.540 Alfred, you can see the difference between their family structures and also the difference between

00:11:19.100 their version of inheritance. So now we're going to talk about characters. So the main character of

00:11:27.100 the show we definitely talked about, we just kind of didn't tell you about him and his name. We didn't

00:11:31.260 give his introduction. Yeah. So his name is Uhtred and he is the one who is half Dane, half Saxon.

00:11:37.500 His name is Osbert. Excuse me. His name is Uhtred. Uhtred Ragnarsson.

00:11:41.100 His name is Osbert. He was baptized as Osbert. Only the second time. He also happened the first time.

00:11:48.140 Didn't even watch the show. So yeah. So Uhtred is the one that we really follow throughout the show.

00:11:53.580 And the way that you know which season is which is by how they do his hair. So that really clarifies

00:11:59.740 things for us. It's always the kind of hair that you would find in the modern day at a male participant

00:12:05.660 in Burning Man or Coachella or a similar music festival. But in this time period, unlike in the

00:12:11.980 modern day, it indicated masculinity, strong values, strength, having a family, and swinging axes into

00:12:22.060 the faces of other people. In the modern day it means vapes, oddly sized shorts, Birkenstock sandals,

00:12:31.100 bad tattoos, and listening to trash music. So yeah. Uhtred is the main character. He's the one that we 0.91

00:12:37.500 follow throughout the story. And he is really well drawn. A lot of the time, the main character of a

00:12:43.580 show is the least well drawn, I find. Bland. Yes. Bland and or too perfect. Yeah. Refer to Harry Potter.

00:12:52.620 Exactly. Which is... Or Luke Skywalker. Yeah. I was thinking Star Wars. Yeah. It's usually a technique,

00:12:57.660 actually, where they want you to be able to put yourself into the shoes of the main character.

00:13:01.980 But this show isn't doing that. They're just telling a story. And Uhtred is the main character. 0.56

00:13:06.940 He's really well developed. You see his struggles throughout. And they're very interesting. Well

00:13:11.980 acted and well written. It's like he's the team leader on an ensemble cast, rather than just the

00:13:17.820 protagonist who you're going to follow all the time, forever. So he comes across with as many

00:13:23.900 foils, like bad traits and good traits as any other character. And we like him because he earns it.

00:13:29.820 Not because we're just oversaturated with Uhtred in our face all the time. Oh, and something I forgot 1.00

00:13:34.300 to mention about the show that's not about character is that this show is constantly,

00:13:41.180 and I'm going to use this phrase, which is a joke now on the internet, subverting your expectations.

00:13:45.660 Oh. But not in that annoying way. For its own sake. Yeah. Not like Game of Thrones,

00:13:50.540 where they just randomly would kill people and, oh, they subverted your expectation again by killing

00:13:55.020 someone. Or how at the end of the Night King was killed by Arya, because literally in there after

00:13:59.260 the episode dialogue, well, everyone expected Jon to do it. Right. So we thought, wouldn't it be cool

00:14:04.700 if we had a character who had no connection to this plot line, just, you know, do that instead.

00:14:10.220 Yeah, exactly. So it's super frustrating on shows like that. But this one, it's not that you can

00:14:16.540 tell that the writers are trying to subvert your expectations. It's not shock value. Not at all.

00:14:20.300 It's like the characters are actually acting in their own best interest, and you as the viewer are

00:14:26.540 trying to understand it in terms of plot, and the writers are understanding it in terms of the

00:14:32.060 character and what the character would actually do. Now, to be clear, background for the show,

00:14:36.860 it is based on a series of novels, I think called the Saxon Chronicles, something to the effect,

00:14:41.100 by Bernard Cromwell. This is the guy who did the Sharp series. It comes across like a good novel

00:14:47.820 writers play with characters rather than a commercially produced show with the studio,

00:14:54.060 with executives, where these are the beats we would naturally hit in a plot. And so if you're good

00:14:59.420 at cliche genre expectations for television shows, you've seen a lot of it, you know, oh, well,

00:15:03.900 they'll kill off this character here because they'll give emotional weight to things, and then

00:15:07.740 you feel nothing. Instead, it doesn't feel like if you're good at knowing cliches, you could predict

00:15:12.940 this show. Instead, it's, oh, things may or may not happen, but it's because that's what would happen

00:15:17.900 in this situation. And it feels like, like what you're saying, feels like one person is telling

00:15:23.020 the story, not a room of executives, which is the opposite to me of like The Witcher, you know,

00:15:29.180 when they turned The Witcher into a show. To me, it felt like there were 16 executives sitting in a

00:15:33.020 room and they were trying to say, okay, well, this needs to happen. And they all wrote for Teen Vogue.

00:15:37.100 And exactly. So I don't, you know, it doesn't feel like the writer of The Witcher books was the

00:15:43.820 one telling the story of the show. For The Last Kingdom, the writer of the books, it feels like this

00:15:49.820 is just his story. It feels as if it's spoken with one voice by a competent storyteller who wants to tell

00:15:54.140 the story rather than get good ratings for sweeps week. Yeah, exactly. So you can take care of

00:16:02.860 telling us about Uhtred's foil. His foil is Alfred, i.e. Alfred the Great, as he is known to history,

00:16:10.460 Alfred of Wessex. So I mentioned before the Heptarchy, there were seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

00:16:14.780 within the landmass of England. And there was one kingdom that was not, at least in the time of the

00:16:20.460 show, I don't know English history that well. One kingdom that's not really been smashed and

00:16:25.100 pulled apart by the Danes or subjugated or weakened, and that was Wessex. Wessex is the area of England

00:16:31.020 along the southern coast. And so that is apparently where Winchester is because that was their capital.

00:16:36.460 And so Alfred the Great is the guy who ends up becoming king rapidly into season one, who has

00:16:41.980 the unitary vision of an England in mind. It's similar to how if you refer to North America as

00:16:47.340 North America rather than THE America. You know, you wanted to somehow make a united empire of Canada,

00:16:52.780 the US, Mexico, and then a little sliver of Central America. If someone had that vision, insane as it

00:16:58.620 is, they would be the Alfred of the modern day. So he wants to make a united Christian England, 0.51

00:17:04.620 but none of that is at hand. And so he, by force of will, wants to make it happen. Now this character

00:17:09.660 is spectacular because he is stern, he is strategic, he is physically weak, he has a lusting after the ladies,

00:17:16.940 he is a complex character, and he's deeply pious. And so his failings hurt at him, his responsibilities

00:17:23.260 are keenly felt by him, and he's got a serious intensity. He feels like what royalty and that

00:17:29.660 like traditionalist sense of like, oh, if only we had a king. What they fetishize as an image is

00:17:34.780 embodied in this guy, not without flaw, WITH flaw, with the flaws of that kind of a thing, but with a

00:17:40.860 strength of will and kind of like a power to him, that is just really well brought across by his

00:17:46.780 actor. And one thing that we found very interesting, Alfred the Great, as I mentioned, he has his

00:17:51.580 Crohn's disease, he's physically a slender man who's weak, and he exudes power. Yes, that's exactly

00:17:59.180 what I was going to say. Everything he says has the force of law and authority. And that's what's so cool

00:18:03.180 about that foil with Uhtred and Alfred is that Uhtred physically just looks really strong, looks

00:18:10.060 powerful. Then you look at Alfred, and he is so frail looking. With a bowl cut? And somehow it's

00:18:16.540 not to his disadvantage? Well, I mean, he doesn't look great, but the fact is that his character,

00:18:23.500 his actor, and the way that he was written, he is very emblematic of strength. This show,

00:18:28.940 you get power from just authority. You see how a king, even if he didn't have troops directly at his

00:18:33.420 command, would have power over people because the culture respects the authority, and the authority

00:18:38.220 is wielded. And you see how women in this show wield a feminine power, which doesn't come at the 1.00

00:18:43.980 point of a sword or from a bicep or whatever, but it is as powerful as anything else because we live in

00:18:49.820 civilization. In the context of civilization, you don't resort back to violence all the dang time. In fact,

00:18:55.260 that's the last thing that happens. Yeah. So if we're not all going to fall apart and start fighting each other,

00:18:59.980 people's soft power and authority of persuasion and social consequences, it matters. So the king

00:19:06.380 matters. The women and their approval or their influence, it might not be the direct person in

00:19:11.340 charge, but they are strong and it comes across. Yeah. It's just so well done. And you know, you have

00:19:16.940 all of these side characters that are also really fleshed out. Actually, one of my favorite characters

00:19:21.980 is not one of those two. And it's Father Beocca. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say Finan,

00:19:27.580 the Irish charming rose. I mean, I do like Finan. Yeah, yeah, I know you do. I like all the characters.

00:19:32.540 A lot of the characters are just so well done and so well explained that they're fascinating and you

00:19:38.620 actually care about their stories. But what's great about this, as opposed to Game of Thrones,

00:19:43.340 and I don't know if this is what you're going to, if this is what you're thinking, you don't spend

00:19:47.180 so much time with the side characters that it feels like there's so many storylines that you

00:19:52.780 have to keep track of. It's really well balanced. It's like, this is a character that we care about.

00:19:58.300 We're not going to spend 15 minutes of an episode on this character, but you're going to see him

00:20:02.940 throughout. You're going to know him. You're going to like him. And this is another character where

00:20:07.020 they're important and they get their own story, but it's not like you're trying to follow the threads

00:20:12.460 of 15 different people. For the most part, when it comes to the side characters, unlike Game of

00:20:17.180 Thrones, where the side characters would have an agenda they were trying to accomplish, so they had

00:20:21.900 a plot line they were doing. In this show, you'll spend time on the side characters. They have their

00:20:26.780 own story, but their story is just characterizing them and developing them and letting more of who they

00:20:32.060 are come across. They don't have an agenda to accomplish in the same way. Basically, they're there

00:20:37.020 as retainers and household members to assist the agenda of the more main characters trying to get

00:20:43.100 stuff done, which means that they serve the proper function of a side character, which is help move

00:20:47.660 things along, provide dramatic weight and interesting conversations and foil, and if one of them gets

00:20:52.220 hurt or does something good, we care, but they don't make it so we have to keep track of more stuff.

00:20:56.940 Yeah, and I just like them in their presence. Exactly. And I think that the part of the reason this show

00:21:02.060 is so good is because it's based on history. So you can't, it's not like, oh, uh, we don't know where

00:21:07.660 the last season's going to end up, but we know what we're going to do in the first two seasons.

00:21:11.500 They know where they're going overall. So the reason that I like Father Baioca so much is-

00:21:16.140 Who's Father Baioca? I will explain. Okay guys, so the camera died. I apologize, but we're back.

00:21:22.060 As it always does. And it does. Every time. I got about 35 minutes on this camera

00:21:27.180 battery. And then it's done-zo. Such a small battery. It is what it is. But I was talking

00:21:32.940 about Father Baioca. The reason that I like him so much, and the reason that I do like him so much,

00:21:37.500 is that he is Uhtred's father's priest in Bebbanburg, which is their northern English

00:21:45.340 fiefdom that they control. And he was there from the very beginning, knew Uhtred, and baptized him

00:21:52.300 before he was taken by the Danes. And then he went over to Alfred when Uhtred was taken. 0.77

00:21:58.300 The first episode. So the lovely thing about Father Baioca's character is that he is trying

00:22:03.580 so hard to do the right thing for Alfred and Uhtred, even as Uhtred has become a Dane, has become a pagan, 0.62

00:22:11.100 but Father Baioca still sees the good in him and encourages it always. And their relationship

00:22:16.620 makes Uhtred better. Yes. And that's why I love his character. It is my favorite. So in line with

00:22:22.940 what I was saying before about the authority of Alfred, despite being physically weak, the authority

00:22:28.620 of the women in the show, despite being women, as someone might say, oh, you're a woman, how do you 1.00

00:22:32.860 have power in the medieval ages? You see it. Yes. Here with Father Baioca, you see the authority of

00:22:37.660 the church, of a religious figure. Father Baioca, as a pious religious man, brings that authority

00:22:43.740 to bear. And it has an effect on people, has an effect on people just because he has the role

00:22:48.460 of a priest, but then also it genuinely is compelling. And so people are brought along with

00:22:53.340 it and he doesn't just use it. He believes it and acts it out. So there's one character,

00:22:58.940 a woman who's in the events of the show, horrifically, emotionally scarred. And so you think,

00:23:04.620 oh, this woman's going to do like some kind of kill Billis revenge narrative or something like that. 1.00

00:23:08.460 And he, Father Baioca is on the scene, steps and says, no, takes her under his wing and then actually

00:23:14.540 heals her mentally with faith in Jesus and Christianity and everything like that, but

00:23:18.940 genuinely compassionately. And it works and it's compellingly brought across. It's like, wow,

00:23:24.540 really no show does that. Yeah, that is spectacularly performed. And his relationship with Uchid is

00:23:29.500 fascinating because Uchid's the Dane pagan, doesn't believe in Christian God, but he's useful to Christian 0.97

00:23:36.540 society and he's useful to the kingdom of Wessex and he's at heart a good man. And so Baioca knows

00:23:42.300 all this and is very accepting of him while also giving him stern rebukes for when he acts out of

00:23:46.860 hand and acts too pagan and things like that. It's great. It's great. And then I just want to say

00:23:51.180 very briefly, like how Father Baioca is played by the same character, same actor who played

00:23:55.340 Quirrell in Harry Potter. Yeah, random little side note. I don't like Harry Potter, but I was interested to

00:24:00.940 know that. It's very random. But my little side note just about the female characters in the show

00:24:06.860 is that they are really, really well done because they are given enough time on screen, but it doesn't

00:24:12.700 feel like they have to have a strength narrative that doesn't fit the time period, which I feel like

00:24:19.740 every show that's... One character has it halfway. I think it works for her and I think it works for all

00:24:25.980 the characters in the show. All the females in the show are kind of working within the framework of 0.95

00:24:30.780 the time period of the history, in my opinion, for the most part. And yet they're not bland,

00:24:35.420 they're not boring, but nor are they reduced to being like subjugated. Instead, they are powerful,

00:24:42.300 motivated characters, but powerful in a realistic and compelling context for what that would mean.

00:24:47.820 And they get stuff done. Yes. So that is something I did want to mention because I feel like in

00:24:53.180 a lot of TV shows, they feel like they have to change the history to make it more PC and this

00:24:58.460 isn't that. They're just... This is like historically true. So a big thing in the show, part of what makes

00:25:03.980 it so compelling, anything that we watch is all about the human characters. Why? Because we connect

00:25:08.860 to people. Even your biggest misanthrope, as long as he watches TV and it's like an actual narrative

00:25:13.820 fiction, you still care about people in some way. That's why we watch anything. And so the strength of the

00:25:18.140 writing is the strength of your characters. And what we really like is that the characters really

00:25:23.100 develop and they mature over time. So our main character of Uchid starts as 18 or 19 year old

00:25:29.500 Danish venturer pagan and he's impetuous and he does things that make us not like him and think, 1.00

00:25:35.740 oh, you're vile. Get out of here, buddy. I don't sympathize with you anymore. And then changes and not 0.99

00:25:42.380 like a massive change of heart, but like tempers, cools down, becomes more mature. And then you see

00:25:47.340 a new set of characters enter the scene because this show has crazy time jumps and now our main

00:25:51.980 character has organically matured to be a voice of reason and is calmer and is still competent and

00:25:57.900 still motivated and still identifiably himself. That is impressive. Very few shows do that. You might

00:26:03.580 know about me. Most of you probably don't. You're going to laugh at me when I say it. I was a Russian

00:26:07.500 literature major in college, which is worthy of scorn on its face. No, no, no. On its face. If you hadn't

00:26:13.340 done Russian literature, then you and I never would have gotten together, which will be in an upcoming

00:26:18.700 video. The discussion of that. But I will say on the marriage of Russian literature, it's amazing.

00:26:22.860 It's a great time studying the major, but you're free to laugh at me for the mere title of Russian

00:26:26.540 literature major. But what's great about the Russian novels is take War and Peace. The novel spans

00:26:31.900 such a long period of time. Characters genuinely grow from an 18 year old to a real man,

00:26:37.100 into a wise man. It's fantastic. This show manages to do that. Very few shows now how to do character

00:26:43.020 growth. So you're with the character. You see the major like, wow, that's what I like this. I'm

00:26:47.500 invested in this journey. Another thing interesting about the show and the other thing I want to talk

00:26:51.660 about that really brings it across that this show is so special is you see the distinction of Alfred

00:26:57.420 the Great's vision for a Christian England and why he's different from his peers and why there's a unique 0.85

00:27:04.140 kind of element of his conflict with the main character Uchid. The Dane warrior pagan who wants 0.67

00:27:10.380 to fight for the Saxons so he can get to his birthright in the north and things like that and

00:27:14.380 feels like the Saxons are kind of his people. Alfred sees him as useful, gets to know him as a man,

00:27:19.500 but still doesn't fundamentally trust him even though surrounding his visors do because Alfred has the

00:27:23.740 vision. A united Christian Saxon England. He's so worried that relying on a Danish pagan will undermine 0.94

00:27:31.340 that vision and like muddy the waters on it and it's just such an interesting push and pull about

00:27:35.420 the idea of that vision one man has that we historically know happened and the surrounding

00:27:41.420 characters being a little bit more opportunistic. That level of detail is not always the best brought

00:27:46.860 across in the show. Sometimes it just feels like Alfred's a little harsh on Uchid for no reason,

00:27:50.940 but when you understand that's what they were trying to do, the idea of making that attempt for a

00:27:54.540 narrative again it's that nuance, it's that sophistication which is realistic and ultra compelling.

00:28:00.140 Yeah, what I'll say is that it touches on big ideas, big topics. Now it doesn't- Without intellectual

00:28:05.420 fancy speeches, which I like. Yeah, I think it's a really well done show. Of course, we're just gonna

00:28:10.620 warn you in advance, there's a character in the third season that we're not a huge fan of the actress

00:28:16.380 for, so I'll just say her name and then you guys can recognize that we don't condone her acting.

00:28:24.780 We don't condone that component of the show. Yes. Skade. Skade. But you'll see when you get there.

00:28:30.060 The Danish witch who's basically a Coachella gal. Shh, we're not gonna say much more. I don't 1.00

00:28:35.660 want to give it away. So bad. So modern. But the last thing I did want to say and then maybe we'll

00:28:41.420 tie this up is that the show really doesn't rely on sex, which I really think is nice. It's in it a

00:28:49.100 little bit. Well, once a season. You need it once a season. You usually compare these kinds of shows

00:28:55.100 to things like Games of Thrones, Game of Thrones, and there's one Game of Thrones. There's apparently

00:28:59.980 multiple Thrones, but one game. Yes. In that show, obviously, it was a lot of sex. In my opinion,

00:29:05.500 too much sex. This show really doesn't rely on it very much and because of that, I think that they

00:29:10.940 do a really good job of developing, you know, romantic relationships outside of just lust, which I

00:29:17.900 think a lot of shows nowadays rely on lust. This show's got great domesticity. Yeah, they do. 1.00

00:29:22.380 It does. And a lot of shows today rely on lust to depict love and this show, in my opinion,

00:29:28.940 doesn't really do that. A little bit. A little bit here and there, but more because he's a Dane and

00:29:34.700 that's a little bit part of their culture in the show. Yeah. I don't know if it's true generally.

00:29:38.860 Maybe in the modern day. Danish fans, please comment below. Has anything changed in your culture

00:29:44.860 since 860? Since Vikings. But yeah, that's one thing about the show that I think is nice and

00:29:51.500 a definite nice thing about it. That heartwarming aspect when like a depicted husband and wife seem

00:29:57.420 to have a connection and understanding in like a home and hearth with like a spirit and like a loving

00:30:01.980 atmosphere of its own. When it's done well, it really brings it across and it shows it as so desirable and

00:30:07.980 wonderful. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. Let me know in the comments below if you have seen

00:30:13.340 The Last Kingdom, what you guys thought about it. I'd love to hear. Do you have anything else to

00:30:17.980 say? Yeah. When I posted on Twitter that we were going to do something about The Last Kingdom, we

00:30:22.700 liked it. Someone commented, yeah, you should. That show is so great, but also so terrible. What do you

00:30:29.580 mean? I actually didn't know what that meant. Where's the so terrible? I don't get it. What are you doing?

00:30:34.380 I liked it personally. Love all of it. Well, thank you guys so much for watching today's video. Please

00:30:39.580 subscribe to my channel and blog if you haven't already. Head over to my Twitter, Instagram, and

00:30:44.060 Facebook and follow me there. Hit that notification bell to get notified of all my new videos. Hit that

00:30:48.620 like button. Please head over to classicallyabbie.locals.com if you'd like to support my channel,

00:30:53.020 see more of this content, and be part of our community. Head over to my husband's channel,

00:30:56.860 at the right angle, if you want to see some of his stuff, and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!

Classically Abby - July 16, 2020

The Last Kingdom - Husband VS. Wife SHOW Review! 🎬｜｜ You should DEFINITELY Watch This On Netflix...

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