The English

Though it is not perfect, I really enjoyed watching this revisionist Western. The weird thing is that, in spite of what I consider to be it’s faults, I’m finding it hard to criticize…. So, faults: *Nearly every one of the episodes seems to be missing at least one (if not several) transitional scenes. This leaves to viewer often unnecessarily disoriented as to where characters are, what happened to let them get there, and, sometimes, why they are where they are. *Distance and space. This show seems to have a peculiarly European understanding of distances on the North American continent—this is something I’ve seen, anecdotally, with some friends and co-workers who don’t live in these here parts. It still seems that many people cannot get their heads around actually how incredibly large this country is. I’m not saying, necessarily, that the makers of this program also have this issue, but rather that the program just does not acknowledge this in any way (and this partially relates to the previously mentioned transition comment). *While I appreciate the attempt to mimic available light in the extensive nighttime and pre-electricity indoor scenes, they are just too dark. This is exacerbated by the production choice to include, in nearly every single daytime scene, extensive lens flares which indicates a willingness, there at least, to break from a visual reality, if you will—in other words, pick one style and follow through with it. That all said, I’m not entirely sure what to change (other than the lighting—go with more artificial). Without changing the runtime, in order to add more scenes and improve spatial awareness, you’d have to pair down what is there—and I really like what is there. And increasing the runtime would, I think, detrimentally affect the flow (which is, admittedly slow but intentional). Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer are both great, particularly their shared scenes (which is, frankly, most of them). They have a believable relationship, and wholly rounded characters (the depths of which are revealed over time). Some of the other characters are, by necessity, somewhat less developed but none-the-less engaging within their own actions (I do wish Toby Jones was in it longer, though). The landscapes (at least the daylight ones) are cleverly alien-looking (in fitting with Blunt’s character having just arrived), somehow both burnt-out and almost candy-colored. While the story doesn’t perhaps go as far as it could in it’s criticism of Manifest Destiny—instead it gets mired somewhat in the politics of getting what’s mine—it does lean far enough in that direction to both raise the issue and make the necessary points. If you’ve only got room in your recent Western miniseries diet, I think ‘Godless’ (2017) is slightly better, but this is pretty damn good and is well worth a watch.