TV and other media for inspiration

[Marras]

With the thread of books for inspiration, I wanted to open a new thread for other media.

As an opener I'd like to promote a TV series 'Turn'. It's a series about American War of Independence and particularly the espionage side of that war. I have watched two first episodes on HBO Nordic and I think it fits the bill for inspiration on Bastards.

[higgins]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely try to check them out.

With that said, there's LOT of good television series out there. Sadly, not much set in our chosen era, but despite that... there's lot which give good inspiration for 'Bastards nevertheless.

Chief among them being Hell on Wheels. Six-shooters aside, I think most westerns would make for good inspiration, to be honest.

For anyone wanting to see some SA's in action (and some spectacular bastards), check out Spartacus (the Starz version)... especially season one and the prequel. Probably in that order as well.

And oddly enough... I consider L.A. Confidential to be a perfect 'Bastards movie.

[Agamemnon]

The weird thing about 'bastards is that we at some point realized the thing we found important about the sort of stories we wanted to tell was something that really blurred genre boundaries.

Westerns in general are a great inspiration. I'm a huge fan of Hell on Wheels, myself. Spartacus is another excellent example. Both of which highly embody the kind of storytelling we're going for. Black Sails was a great example.

The Borgias (the Jeremy Irons version) is a great series. It takes a while to get off the ground, but it's also directly in our time period and very much about the personal conflicts and motivations.

The BBC Musketeers was pretty decent as well, and wouldn't make a bad template for a more light-hearted bastards series. It's not quite as good on the "character driven narrative" front though. The Game of Thrones series largely goes without saying, though I also liked the extremely short-lived Showtime Camelot series. I think it only lasted a season (killed by competition with Game of Thrones, no less).

The History show Vikings, for all of its (ironically) a-historical failings, is pretty decent as well for our purposes.

The most amusing outlier for me is that I'm a huge fan of Sons of Anarchy (at least early on. My personal head-canon is that they ended the series at the end of season 4), and I'd have a hard time arguing a better example of a literal band of bastards. The storytelling is all about those extreme and often violent clashes of personal goals and conflicts, even as the group is trying to work together to survive or strive towards a greater central goal.

[higgins]

The Game of Thrones series largely goes without saying

This was such an obvious mention at this point that I didn't even bring it up

[Agamemnon]

From what I understand, the BBC will be putting together a show based on Cornwell's Uhtred stories. Trying to cash in on some crossover between the Game of Thrones crowd and Vikings.