Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Ryan Gage, Alexandra Dowling, Marc Warren, Hugo Speer, Maimie McCoy, Tamla Kari, Christopher Fulford, Micah Balfour, Stuart Bowman, Robin Browne, Will Keen, Brian McCardie, Mark Penfold, Brian Pettifer, Charlotte Reid, Oliver Rix, Chris Ryman, Charlotte Salt, Anton Saunders, Antonia Thomas.
It doesn’t matter who you are, at any point in our lives we have all wanted to exchange places with someone, young or old, male or female, we all want to experience what life may be like as another person. Where the thought may fall down is in the less well off quite happily wishing to exchange places with the rich, famous and exuberant, it is never envisioned the other way round unless it is to show that a prince for example can easily pass as a so called commoner…it is a prospect that never seems to end well as the person on the end of the exchange is thrown so far out of their depth that madness can only ensue.
In the second of the new series of The Musketeers, An Ordinary Man, it is, with perhaps a huge nod to the Prince and the Pauper story, that King Louis XIII orders his Musketeers to show him the life of Paris as seen in their eyes. This action, whilst not the only role reversal that is happening in the episode as new boundaries are drawn and old allegiances made use of, leads to the King getting more than he bargained for, the Queen being led down a path that could lead to destruction and for one of the Musketeers, the shame of flirting with someone that he had no interest in, just to calm his heart.
One of the most intriguing and well drawn female characters from pre 20th Century literature is that of Milady de Winter, and throughout every screen and film incarnation, the actor playing the treacherous femme fatale has never truly captured what it means to be her. That is until Maimie McCoy donned the untrustworthy and perilous offering and in who arguably has become the embodiment of the part.
There is something thrilling and devilishly underhand in the way that the makers of the series have pitted the three main female roles as being different sides of the same personality. The duplicity but dangerously attractive soul of Milady de Winter is countered by Tamla Kari’s outwardly sweet but with loving disloyalty in the heart of Constance Bonacieux and interestingly the balance between the two is shown with Alexandra Dowling’s Queen Anne as she struggles with the love of her adopted country but the alleged harm she may have wrought with her secret assignation with Musketeer Aramis. Outside of a major one off drama, it’s hard to think to a television programme that makes the absolute most of three very powerful female parts. It is that unreserved reliability to the story that makes The Musketeers a constant gem.
With The Musketeers offering something very different, to any of its televised or cinematic predecessors and to many television programmes that are around today, the chance to restructure your thoughts into living a different life, the squash buckling adventurer is alive fully in either gender and it certainly makes the programme one of the best around.
Ian D. Hall