World Without End

Series one, episode two
The standard tropes of medieval drama are ticked off pretty swiftly in this third part of C4’s realisation of Ken Follett’s novel. Within the first ten minutes alone we’ve got rotting bodies in carts, fat men in rope-fastened robes and people with silly names like ‘Wulfric’ calling each other ‘sire’. There’s also sex, murder and the sort of swearing you’d expect from a Guy Ritchie film, all of which almost – but not quite – serves to distract us from a plodding storyline centred around the election of a new prior for the town of Kingsbridge. There are signs the plot’s being fattened up for the kill, but at the moment you’re essentially looking at a low-rent ‘Game of Thrones’ with less sword swinging and posher accents.