Salon.com > The Borgias http://www.salon.com Sun, 19 May 2013 03:14:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Camelot” and “Borgias”: Blood, boobs and costume drama http://www.salon.com/2011/04/02/camelot_borgias/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/02/camelot_borgias/#comments Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/02/camelot_borgias Once upon a time, the phrase "costume drama" conjured images of ornate throne rooms and garbed, bored-looking royals telling servants, "Leave us!"  At some point -- probably the '60s  -- filmmakers started to mess with the template, keeping the lush costumes and intricate social rituals while adding ever-more-generous dollops of sex and violence.  You still see queens telling servants, "Leave us," but now they're likely to to be naked and holding a severed head. The new cable series "Camelot" and "The Borgias" carry on in this tradition, offering pomp and sin in equal measure; they're parchment scrolls dipped in blood.

Worse things first: "Camelot" (which debuted Friday on Starz) is a take on the Arthurian legends with little interest in honor or poetry. It's mainly about intrigue -- who's setting up whom for exile or assassination, who's sleeping with whose significant other. Publicity material cautions, "Forget everything you think you know: This is the story of Camelot that has never been told before." Which presumably explains why the future sorceress Morgan LeFay (Eva Green)  and the future King Arthur (Jamie Campbell Bower) are going at each other like Superman and Lex Luthor.

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