Why Historical TV is Chucking Away the History Books

The Rise of the “Anti-Historical”

Historical retellings that have played fast and loose with history are nothing new (see: Shakespeare), and gleefully inaccurate comedies are also well represented among the classics – Monty Python, Blackadder, ‘Allo ‘Allo, for a small sample.

But over the last couple of decades historical comedy-dramas not quite as all-out hilarious as Edmund and Baldrick’s adventures have begun owning the fact.

Desperate Romantics (2009), which did excellent work in the service of making Aidan Turner look bedraggled in a big puffy shirt, opened with the disclaimer “In the mid-19th century, a group of young men challenged the art establishment of the day. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were inspired by the real world about them, yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit.”

And it did that, although while events were compressed for pace, and plenty of fictional material was added, it benefited from the outrageous nature of the source material. The series’ grave-digging finale, for instance, was not invented.

Not long before that, Russell T Davies’ David Tennant-starring Casanova biopic verged on fourth-wall breaking, with characters complimenting Casanova on his French as he spoke in the broad estuary English that would become the Tenth Doctor’s trademark.

Skipping forward a couple of decades, the marketing for Hulu’s The Great included social media polls asking who would win in the battle for Russia’s throne, which might seem like an artificial source of tension given we could all look up the answer on Wikipedia.