Never fear, Sons of Anarchy fans – though that acclaimed FX drama has concluded its final season, creator Kurt Sutter is reteaming with the network for this fall’s medieval actioner The Bastard Executioner. Now, a first teaser trailer for the sure-to-be brutal show has landed, and though it’s a relatively content-free look at the series, it does do a little to put us into the program’s period setting.
Katey Sagal stars alongside Lee Jones, Stephen Moyer, Flora Spencer-Longhurst, Sam Spruell, Darren Evans, Danny Sapani, Timothy V. Murphy, Sarah White, Sarah Sweeney, Elen Rhys, Ethan Griffiths and guest star Matthew Rhys in the series. Here’s the logline:
Bastard Executioner tells the story of a warrior knight in King Edward The Thirds charge who is broken by the ravages of war and vows to lay down his sword. But when that violence finds him again, he is forced to pick up the bloodiest sword of all.
Back when the show was picked up for a 10-episode first season, Sutter said:
“I love history. I love theology. I love blood. It’s been very satisfying weaving fact and fiction to create a new mythology that combines all these elements. And with this extraordinary cast — Stephen Moyer, Katey Sagal and newcomer Lee Jones — this world explodes on screen. I love working with FX and Fox21TVS. They’ve been my family for 15 years. They not only tolerate me, they embrace my extremely disturbing storytelling sensibilities.”
Sword-and-shield epics like this are hit-and-miss – look at Camelot, Marco Polo, The Tudors and Game of Thrones to get a sense of the spectrum these series can fall across. Some are brilliant, some are awful and quite a few end up somewhere in the middle. Luckily, with Sutter at the helm of The Bastard Executioner, the series will surely set itself apart with sheer brutality and griminess – and that could be a great thing.
