Another year, another big money, lush looking BBC action drama that doesn’t work very well. The Musketeers aired last night on BBC1 at the exalted time of 9pm. This means, unlike Atlantis, Merlin and even Doctor Who, it wasn’t a kids programme dressed up as an adult one. Well in theory. There was plenty of cleveage, lots of hacking and slashing (not very much blood), some shooting and some utterly execrable scripting. The BBC are developing a knack of making wonderfully looking programmes, from the sets to the film editing, that are spoiled by terrible writing and the Musketeers is firmly in that camp. Most of the dialogue, plotting and general sense of the show would fit in perfectly with something like Merlin. It’s like Merlin with boobs instead of magic (although some of the cleavage is quite magical) and a bit more light cursing really.
Considering it’s set in France in the 1600’s, it was exceptionally Cockney in accent too.
So to my mind, the best TV adaptation of Dumas’ work is still Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. Not least for the excellent opening credit sequence which you can see below. Yes, this post was entirely a veiled effort to get the theme tune on to my blog and I make no apology about it…