The Musketeers

Yeah, I'm procrastinating again. Between a dayjob and indulging my quarter-life crisis by grinding Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, I'm also doing the occasional Netflix binge. And this time I've finished watching through The Musketeers, the BBC's adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Well, I say it's an adaptation, but really it's a series of stories using the same characters and setting.

We follow Luke Pasqualino as d'Artagnan, a Gascon farm boy who travels to Paris and ends up seeking to join The Musketeers, an elite group of soldiers who protect and serve the childish King Louis XIII and his consort Anne of Austria, played respectively by Ryan Gage and Alexandra Dowling. d'Artagnan is taken under the wing of three of regiment's finest men: Athos, a nobleman with a shady past played by Tom Burke; Porthos, a boisterous carouser played by Howard Charles; and Aramis, a womanising yet deeply religious libertine played by Santiago Cabrera. The series follows the four as they go on numerous adventures while serving under Captain Treville, played by Hugo Speer.

The first series features Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu - an amoral high-ranking politician who schemes and plots for both his country and his own benefit. Capaldi's previous role had been Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, in which he plays an amoral high-ranking politician who schemes and plots for both his country and his own benefit. To the show's credit, Cardinal Tucker doesn't seek the throne for himself like in most adaptations. But he does seek to control it, and is ruthless to the core - often utilising his agent Milady de Winter, played by Mamie McCoy. However, a lot of the stories tend to have a villain of the week. After Capaldi left to work on Doctor Who, we get a new antagonist in the form of Marc Warren's more unpredictable Comte de Rochefort.

While there are a fair few dark moments, the series overall is your typical mindless swashbuckling with swordfights, romance, conspiracies etc. The drama isn't always great, but the chemistry between the main characters keeps me interested enough to watch through to the end. When you get down to it, all you really need is some action.

Yes, it's a little cliched, and it's odd that everyone in 17th Century France sounds like they're from Eastenders - yet anyone who isn't French speaks with their native accent (with the exception of one very Irish-sounding Italian priest).

All three seasons are available on Netflix at the time of writing, and I do recommend them to pass the time. It's all for fun and fun for all.