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Review TV show Vikings
So my wife and I started watching Vikings. Mainly because my wife probably has some Viking in her history somewhere.
I've only watched up to the fourth series because the fifth is still in production and is not available on Amazon Prime. As well I'm not sure I want to continue past that.
The TV story is based on the Viking Hero Sage of Ragnar Lothbrok. A person who may or may not have existed. His sons (or those claiming to be his sons) are historical people. The TV show more or less follows his tales. There are other real historical characters in it.
Now overall the TV show does not reflect history that well. It also has messed with the real timeline of historical events and has used debatable historical references for some of the 'facts' of Viking culture so the best way to view Vikings is as entertainment. We simply don't know enough about the Vikings and what we do know is not shown correctly in this TV show.
So that's the way I'll review the show. On it's entertainment merit. I won't say too much of the story. The scenery is well shot. The acting got better as time went on. So overall it's a decent TV show.
Season one had a real nice pace to it. (9 episodes) I thought it was a bit jumpy at times and the actors were still getting into their roles so as is typical of any first season things felt a bit rough. But overall I enjoyed it. A note here that all through Vikings it's sometimes difficult to know the time frames. Something that may or may not bother you. In this season we get introduced to the English characters.
Season two again had a great pace to it. (10 episodes) Events happened quickly. Story had good movement and the acting had gotten better. I felt it had good story telling and overall the character development though still feeling a bit shallow had gotten better. Some additional Vikings and English characters are added.
Season three. Still a short series (10 episodes) but a lot happens it in. Here the French characters are added along with continued story telling of the English characters which means things jumped around a lot. This series had a lot going on in it and it's possible it was too short to fill in everything but overall it was a good series and I enjoyed it.
Season four. This is where things probably go a bit wrong. This ends up being a 20 episode series. Some rather weird plot lines happen. There are a lot of things going on and some of it just didn't make any sense and didn't add anything to the story at all. It does however in my mind end the story.
A lot of major plot points end in this series and I have to admit after the ending of this series I'm not sure I want to continue watching as I don't like many of the elements left in the story itself. I've heard that series five is similar to this series with a lot of wandering plot points that don't go anywhere.
Personally if they had kept the pace of the first three series this show probably would be a great show. As it is, it's good but not fantastic. I personally would have preferred a closer historical connection and a realistic view of Viking life. I can appreciate that they had to make things thrilling and that's perfectly fine but this complete removal from history is a bit disappointing for me.
Overall I give this a 3/5 for entertainment value.
It's worth a watch just for the scenery, general story and a bit of fun. Just don't take anything about it too seriously as it doesn't reflect history that accurately and even the story of Ragnar is not correctly portrayed.
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