Another episode of this series.
An enemy’s daughter is kidnapped and the Musketeers help to rescue her, in exchange for a deadly gunpowder recipe. Things get complicated when Porthos is captured. The main issue over the Moorish enemy gives the BBC a chance to shove racism down our throats at every opportunity.
Needing some much-needed catch up with this series, it has me questioning many times why indeed I even began watching it to begin with back in 2014. If dramatic striding tracking shots are your thing, then you won’t be disappointed here. It is also visually very pretty, not just with the locale but also with the leading men.
Rochefort as substitute for Richelieu seems bordering on the farcical, and he clearly has deep-rooted sexual fantasies. He is little more than a comic King Louis also becomes besotted by Milady De Winter’s charms. The storyline concerning the health of the baby Dauphin certainly had the right amount of tension to make it interesting. However, making Constance ‘outspoken’ just made her a bit arrogant and egocentric here. There is also a limit to how many slow motion explosions / frantic arrests you can take in one episode.
I wish one day that they could continue the use of secondary characters for further plots interlinked with the inner circle. That could make it interesting and give a rest from the ‘Musketeer of the Week’ mentality. An OK episode over all.
MY RATING: *** / *****
Movie and Television Blog (2013- 