Did You Watch Gunpowder Last Night On Bbc One?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/10/21/gunpowder-episode-1-review-guy-fawkes-tale-gets-glossy-big-budget/

After watching the graphic scenes of the public execution of a naked woman crushed to death underneath a heavy metal plate with huge weights placed on top and the hanging, drawing and quartering of a young man, made me think that I was no better than those in the crowds who watched the executions.

Yes I know that it is only fiction and I could have turned my TV off, but it was so dramatic, I was frozen in my chair.

Be interesting to know how others reacted.

[naomi24]

https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Media-and-TV/TV/Question1576104.html

[Zacs-Master]

It was used as a device to get you on the side of the plotters (not that it didn’t happen) which fits in with the programmes aim of telling the story from a different angle. I think to claim that it made the viewer (or at least you) feel like a bloodthirsty crowd member, misses the point.

[anotheoldgit]

naomi24

Thank you for the sub-text link, I did look through all the Media-TV threads before I posted.

Even so your link is pre-Gunpowder showing.

[jno]

I didn't see it but ... as with stories in newspapers, it's often worth asking yourself "why is somebody telling me this?" ZM may well be right - to get you to sympathise with the plotters - but you might also wonder if the same result could have been achieved less luridly.

But nobody (I hope) actually died; we generally know this when watching TV, even when swept up in the action. It doesn't mean you'd turn out to watch a real execution.

[anotheoldgit]

Zacs-Master

I think it did more than that Zacs, I and I suspect others have thought after a terrorist attack that Islam should be banned in this country.

But seeing what prosecutions could take place if certain religions were to be banned, puts an all different light on the matter.

Not that I am saying that the persecutions would be as horrific as those of our primitive past one hastens to add.

[anotheoldgit]

jno

A very good point jno.

[kvalidir]

I thought it was great. There's nothing the matter with sickening 'lurid' violence as that encourages no-one to commit atrocities in real life, quite the reverse actually, there is everything the matter with normal 'TV violence' where people die quickly and cleanly for a plot point, and nothing seems real. I think if you're going to retell this then it needs to be as graphic as it is, history is not sterile, it's vile and to suggest everyone went bravely flouncing around dying 'well' does in injustice to the real life people who actually did it, and who's tale we are supposedly telling.

[Zacs-Master]

AOG, ‘I think it did more than that Zacs, I and I suspect others have thought after a terrorist attack that Islam should be banned in this country. ’

And in English that would mean......?

[tonyav]

Watched all three episodes this afternoon on BBC iplayer ( yes all three episodes are on there ).
Very very good imo.

[johnny37]

whenever his time of year comes around i think of he awful things they used to do to each other in those days. I warned my wife it was going to be graphic. She switched off. Not suitable viewing for prime time Saturday, i think. Entertainment? I think not.

[ToraToraTora]

no worse that corrie or eastenders 3 times a week.

[ichkeria]

That is exactly what it was like in those days. Gruesome it was, as confirmed by the Spanish burnings in the next episode. For once I agree totally with AOG, in his comments on persecution.