Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Burke, Peter Capaldi, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Santiago Cabera, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Cage, Mainie McCoy, Hugo Speer, Jason Flemyng, Bo Poraj, John Poston, Carl McCrystal, Lukas Vychopen, Sean Cernow, Denise Gough, Jan Holik, Ian Barritt.

Two episodes in and B.B.C.’s The Musketeers already looks to be to living up to the ultimate ideal that has promised so much over the last 100 years but has never quite been able to live up to. With the very obvious exception of the set of films starring Michael York and Oliver Reed, all that has gone before this adaptation has been lacklustre, almost afraid to live to its full potential, the taste of an éclair filled with inedible garlic could not have not have left a more sour taste in the mouth of those entranced by Alexandre Dumas’ work.

Sleight of Hand, written by Adrian Hodges, deals with so much double crossing and bluff that it would make Cardinal Richelieu’s head spin in nervous admiration. What catches the attention from the start of this excellent episode is perhaps one of the most realistic sword fights ever captured on television. Choreographed within an inch of its life, the absolute audacity in staging a fight scene in such a manner deserves respect, it is up there with anything that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was able to portray and even though the scene was over in a couple of minutes, it captured the very nature of the times and more importantly the story perfectly.

With D’Artagnan captured for illegal duelling, the plan laid out by the Captain of the Musketeers, Treville, Hugo Speer giving his finest and fiercest growl in any televised role for many years, comes into effect to find out the plans of one of the great criminals of France, Vadim. With his usual aplomb and striking mad, bad and dangerous too know attitude that he carries so well into any film or television series, Jason Flemyng fills the screen with his brooding portrayal of the man who has shown the almost disposable anarchists how to dismantle France from the  top down.

One of the great characters in the book will always be Milady De Winter and is one of the very few really captured for all her intrigue and vast sex-appeal by many of the actors who have had the honour to play the role. Maimie McCoy is no different; she simply excels in the part and gives that extra rush of female double dealing and fascinating femininity that is required to make her such a delicious character of fiction.

If you are going to take one of the great works of literature and turn it into a spectacle of illumination then even after just two episodes, it is easy to see that The Musketeers is a masterpiece worthy of the book.

Ian D. Hall