Vikings: Season 3

Ragnar Lothbrok is now the King of Kattegat, ruling over a host of lesser earls. He has also forged a strong alliance with King Ecbert of Wessex, enjoying more power and influence than any Viking king before him. Aware that his people still yearn for conquest and raids, Ragnar turns to his loyal Christian friend and advisor Athelstan, who tells him tales of a fabled city to the south called Paris. Ragnar becomes obsessed with tales of this city and soon has marshalled the might of the Viking nation against it. But his obsession comes at a very high cost.

The third season of Vikings does not hang around. Having chronicled the (allegedly) reluctant rise to power of Ragnar Lothbrok over two previous seasons and nineteen episodes, the third season asks a more interesting question: what is he going to do with that power now he has it? We know that Ragnar wants to be more than a brute and a warmonger, he wants to be a statesman, a builder and a farmer, the man who brings his people out of their rocky homeland to a warmer place where the soil is better. But he is also not a fool, and knows his people still like to raid and to fight.

The result of this is a clever two-pronged strategy. Invoking the alliance forged with Ecbert last year, he plans to set up a Viking colony in Wessex. He also plans to appease his more combat-hungry troops by mounting an assault on Paris and carrying off its immense wealth. It's a clever plan which, you'll be shocked to hear, doesn't entirely pan out.

This season sees Viking at its most expansive. There's scenes in Kattegat, several other Scandinavian locations, Wessex, Mercia and in Paris. As well as Ragnar and his extended family and allies, there's also the royal families in Wessex and Mercia to deal with, and a whole new cast of characters in Paris to get to know, including the weak-willed King Charles the Simple, the more formidable Count Odo and the strong-willed Princess Gisla. The rising scale is handled well by the show. The producers deftly interleave a whole series of complex storylines (including a subplot where a very strange man shows up in Kattegat and causes chaos) with verve and skill.

The show also continues to comment on larger-scale historical forces, religion and culture through some very personal character stories. There's the ongoing religious turmoil of Athelstan (and Ragnar's fascination with Christianity) and how this interacts with Floki's growing anger that the threat posed by Christianity to the Norse way of life is being ignored. There's Ecbert's ongoing clash between his acceptance of other cultures (there's a terrific and cynically honest exchange between him and Ragnar) but knowing that his priests and lords will not accept many concessions to the heathens.

The result is a rich tapestry of a show, with more going on than just the endless cycle of betrayal and counter-betrayal in the previous season. The last few episodes of the season then take things to the next level by depicting the full-scale Siege of Paris in all its glory. With lengthy, massive battle sequences that easily match anything in Game of Thrones, this season sees Vikings gain a scope and epic reach to match its already-impressive character work.

Season 3 of Vikings (*****) sees an already-impressive show become even better: grander, more epic, more brutal but also more human, more intimate and smarter. It is available now on Blu Ray (UK, USA) and DVD (UK, USA).

Vikings: Season 2

Ragnar Lothbrok is now Earl of Kattegat and a vassal of King Horik. They combine their forces to wage war on Jarl Borg, who is allied to Ragnar's brother Rollo. After fighting to a standstill, Ragnar proposes they mount a new alliance to invade Northumbria in England and seize land there. Ragnar reluctantly allows Rollo to return to Kattegat and spends the next four years preparing his forces. When the time comes, Ragnar and Horik betray their word and invade England without Borg, but are blown off-course and instead land in Wessex, ruled by the wily and cunning King Ecbert who immediately sees opportunity with these invaders from the sea.

The first season of Vikings was a welcome, straightforward tale of blood, lust, cunning and surprising restraint. Although it would be difficult to call it fully historically accurate, it was far more historically accurate than any other show about the Viking Age and made a good attempt to show the full complexities of the Viking culture and the Anglo-Saxon one they came into contact with. It also channelled some Game of Thrones-style political machinations and some very well-realised action and effects scenes. It was, overall, a winner.

Season 2 is, if anything, better. It opens up the world a little, bringing in the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia and delves deeply into the psyches of the core cast of characters: Ragnar, Lagertha, Aslaug, Rollo, Floki, Athelstan and the now-grown-up Bjorn, as well as developing some minor characters from Season 1 (Horik and Borg) and introducing a major new player in the form of the canny Ecbert. Actors both established and new do exceptional work, especially English actor Linus Roache, who portrays the ambitious King Ecbert of Wessex with intelligence and off-beat candour. George Blagden also levels up as Athelstan, who's conflict of faith and culture is played to the hilt and done incredibly well.

The show moves between several long-running storylines, mixing up Ragnar's ambitions on the home front (which Donal Logue's brilliantly-played Horik is increasingly wary of) with his desire for conquests in the west but also his deep-seated longing for family, good earth and to live in peace. Ragnar's preference for negotiation before bloodshed marked him out as a different kind of Viking in the first season and that continues in the second, particularly his relationship with Ecbert, the first opponent that Ragnar has met who is as cunning and clever as he is (despite Ecbert's curious obsession with holding every major diplomatic meeting in a communal bath). Elsewhere, Lagertha's attempts to step out of Ragnar's shadow are compromised by her political decision to marry another jarl which backfires when he turns out to be a violent and abusive imbecile. Lagertha, as to be expected, does not take well to this and soon is setting up her own grab for power. This ties in with young Bjorn, who refreshingly doesn't hate his absentee father or deify him, but instead treats him with cautious respect as he tries to figure out who he is.

Vikings therefore has evolved into a curious hybrid of family drama, history lesson, political potboiler and all-out action story. There are several major battles (and lots of smaller skirmishes), some of which are very impressive indeed, but the writers are more interested in this band of characters, some historical, some legendary, some brand-new but all fascinating, flawed and human.

Flaws? Well, watching manly men with swords pledging brotherhood and alliance and knowing they'll be turning on each other in a couple of episodes time risks feeling repetitive, but this does set up some last-minute plot twists that are well-handled. The growing sense of scale can also feel like it trivialises what were once epic and dangerous quests, with Ragnar and his men shooting back and forth over the North Sea like they're taking a brief stroll when it was a major life-threatening voyage in the first season (although that was probably true to the actual historical experience as well). There's also some very oddball historical inconsistencies: Ragnar and his men accidentally land in Wessex without knowing it's there and they don't seem to know about France just across the Channel, despite Ecbert waxing lyrical about Vikings visiting the court of Charlemagne five minutes earlier. But these are fairly minor.

Season 2 of Vikings (****½) is a gripping and enjoyable continuation of the first season and well worth a watch. It is available now on Blu-Ray (UK, USA) and DVD (UK, USA).

Vikings: Season 1

Ragnar Lothbrok is a great Norse warrior. He has discovered a means of navigating across the open sea between Scandinavia and the rich western lands of England, but his chieftain, Earl Haraldson, is unimpressed and plans to raid east into the Baltic lands. Ragnar defies his chief to lead a raid in an English monastery named Lindisfarne. Returning home with gold and Christian monks taken as slaves, Ragnar is acclaimed a great hero...and an enemy and rival of Haraldson.

Vikings is a TV show about Vikings, doing Viking stuff like raiding, fighting, carousing and sailing. As far as TV shows go, Vikings does exactly what it says on the tin.

It's also made by the History Channel, which means that it strives to be historically more accurate than most shows about Vikings. It does feature the required amount of raiding, killing, blood-spurting, drunken partying and prayers to Thor and Odin, of course, but it also makes it clear that the Norsemen only raid during the summer and spend the rest of the year fishing, farming or engaging in other trades. The Viking code of law, which sees murder grievously punished and a robust (if primitive) form of jury trial in place, is given a nod and the more-or-less equal nature of women in Viking society as the keepers of the home and hearth, as well as occasionally joining raiding parties as shieldmaidens, is explored.

This first season is nine episodes long and unfolds with verve and vigour. Early episodes focus on Ragnar Lothbrook, played with wild-eyed charisma by Travis Fimmel (also recently seen in the lead role of the WarCraft movie) and his family, particularly his wife Lagertha, played with gravitas and barely-restrained fury by Katheryn Winnick. Clive Standen plays Rollo, Ragnar's older-but-less-capable brother who is deeply loyal to his family but also resentful of his brother's wits and jealous of his wife. Gustaf Skarsgard plays Floki, the builder of Ragnar's ship and the only person around capable of out-crazy-eyeing him. It is hinted in the series that Floki may be touched by the spirit of the trickster god Loki, as his crazy and unpredictable antics show. George Blagstan gives an interesting performance as Athelstan, the Christian monk enslaved by Ragnar but later becomes a friend and "our" viewpoint into the alien world of the Vikings. Rounding out the first season cast is the best-known face, Gabriel Byrne as the main villain, Haraldson.

Given that - Byrne aside - the entire cast is made up of newcomers and lesser-known faces, it's impressive that they all give incredibly convincing and passionate performances. In fact, given that it's from the same makers as the fun-but-cheesy-and-lightweight The Tudors, Vikings impresses all around for the weight and gravity with which it approaches the story. Character motivation is established early on and develops naturally, the Viking culture is portrayed with greater depth and complexity than almost any previous televised depiction and battle sequences (which the show does not shy away from) are visceral, bloody and convincing. The political machinations are fairly straightforward but nevertheless unfold with dire inevitability. Given the short run time, the series enjoys a strong variation in tone (from action to mystical religious stuff to good-hearted fellowship to romance to intrigue), location and character.

The show is reasonably historically accurate - to what we know of anyway - but some decisions are questionable. The idea that the Northumbrians don't know about the Vikings and have enjoyed a long period of peace so don't really know how to fight is somewhat questionable: the Anglo-Saxons weren't exactly shy about fighting and raiding one another and probably knew how to form a shield wall. The show's early episodes also establish a well-respected legal system which everyone is careful to obey, even Earl Haraldson, but later in the season he goes into full-on tyrant mode which is both disappointing from a character perspective and also conflicts with the earlier tone.

Overall, however, the first season of Vikings (****½) is enormous fun. It's well-written, well-acted all around, more subtle and nuanced than you'd expect and delivers tremendously good battle scenes. It's available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).