Archamasse t1_ja9n9xy wrote
Reply to comment by camwow13 in ‘I Still Don’t Know What It Was’ An oral history of Kings, the ambitious, expensive, proudly weird drama on which NBC bet its prestige future and lost. by KalamsLongknife
The thing that really struck me about it - and made it feel way too weird for Network tv - was that for a clearly biblically infused story, it doesn't really feel like it's trying to sell you a "message" at all. It feels like what those mythologies would feel like to the figures in them. When weird shit happens to you, personally, in the Book of Samuel or whatever, you just have to kind of roll with it, because you live in a world where God himself crowned the king you're paying tax to. It's not a fable, just matter of fact.
It's unusual, because it feels like treating the human, political bible stuff the way shows usually prefer to treat all the angels and demons stuff, or like a big Viking saga or something.
camwow13 t1_ja9pekx wrote
God in the show is extremely subtle yet omnipresent in everything. Everyone accepts it as a matter of fact, yet as a character, God rarely shows up except to tip the scales one direction or the other. He communicates entirely through prophets and signs that aren't too overt and aren't too subtle. The one episode where satan showed up was interesting too since she clearly has the power to rain down curses and make deals with the humans too.
The writing never quite reaches the point where they could adequately explore these themes though. Definitely too high concept for network television writing constraints.
Not that there are actual writing constraints besides content rules, but network TV just almost always feels like it's been tied down to be Basic AF.
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