Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8/10
Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Luke Pasqualini, Peter Capaldi, Zoe Tapper, Howard Charles, Ryan Gage, Tamla Kari, Maimie McCoy, Hugo Speer, Vinnie Jones, John Lightbody, Perry Fitzpatrick, Bo Poraj, Christos Tolera, Richard Symes, Simon Meacock, Giles Taylor.
Just how does the best swordsman not in active service in France become a member of the elite guards known as The Musketeers? Help from friends, patronage from a great lady, luck, skill, taking on Vinnie Jones in a sword fight that on paper would surely have had footballers of a previous generation checking more than their equipment at the sight of one of the hard men of the game brandishing a weapon.
Whatever the reason the eighth episode of the highly entertaining B.B.C. series The Musketeers, titled The Challenge lived up to its name as perhaps the most steel induced octane ride of the programme run yet.
With Athos, Aramis, Porthos and d’Artagnan delivering the violent and terrifying criminal Labarge to Paris for justice, the struggle between the King’s Guards and the men loyal to Cardinal Richelieu reaches dangerous levels as pride in The Red Guard approaches almost stupid levels. Whilst the star of the episode has been the tremendous find of Luke Pasqualini as the young, sometimes cocky and yet utterly loyal d’Artagnan, it was almost with a sense of cinematic relief to see Vinnie Jones back on television playing the near indestructible Labarge. Love him or loathe him as a footballer, depending on whether you admire the silky smooth skills of the modern game or remember with a certain fondness when some hard men did make the game, if not exciting, then a match in which unsympathetic to certain aspects of the game, such as diving, would have had the type of player seething with disgust and given proper instruction not to do it again. As an actor in certain parts he is worth his weight in gold. He brings true menace to certain parts, a believable callousness and disturbing quality in which you can help but look on with a critical wonder.
The initial altercation soon descends into one in which a fight between the factions is ordered on the King’s behalf and it is one is which d’Artagnan is out to prove himself but needs the help of a good woman in which to enter the fray. With Maimie McCoy’s Milady hovering in the wings like a stalking she-wolf, as the series has progressed, Maimie McCoy has more than made the part her own, and the superb Tamla Kari as Constance wanting to be at the young would be Musketeer’s side, it is not just a battle of strength d’Artagnan is facing but one that he might not be able to survive, the machinations of a plotting woman.
The Challenge was a superbly choreographed piece of television, a reminder that good quality programming does exist and always a welcome sight in the sometimes muddied sea of the mundane, but it was also an episode in which the fighting spirit was seen to have nothing on the workings of the mind, the drip feed of psychological warfare and which was perfectly captured between Milady and The Cardinal and Constance and her husband.
This enjoyable series keeps hitting the target.
The Musketeers continues next Sunday.
Ian D. Hall