The Bastard Executioner is one show we have all been desperately waiting for.
All Kurt Sutter fans who have had a taste of his style in Sons of Anarchy could not hold their excitement when his next show, The Bastard Executioner . In fact, the project was announced even before the sixth season of Sons of Anarchy wrapped up in December 2013. It has been over one and a half years since that first announcement, and now the medieval epic drama is almost ready for its premiere in just about a month’s time on September 15.
According to Deadline , the pilot episode of The Bastard Executioner will be a two-hour episode and will debut at 10 p.m. The blood-soaked epic tells the tale of Wilkin Brattle (played by Australian actor Lee Jones), a 14th-century warrior in King Edward I’s army, whose life is forever changed when a divine messenger asks him to lay down his weapons and lead the life of a journeyman executioner.
Stephen Moyer, the True Blood actor who almost teamed up with Sutter on Sons of Anarchy , and Sutter’s wife, Katey Sagal, who was hailed for her role as Gemma Teller Morrow in Sons , also feature in The Bastard Executioner . But perhaps the most exciting news is that English pop star Ed Sheeran has joined the cast as Sir Cormac, an ambitious and deadly protégé of a high-ranking church elder, according to the Hollywood Reporter .
The Bastard Executioner also pairs Sutter and his long-time confidante, Paris Barclay — the man responsible for perfectly directing the high-adrenaline sequences of Sons of Anarchy — together one more time. As Monsters & Critics noted, at a recent promotional event in Beverly Hills , Barclay talked about the effort that had gone into creating the historical/period aspect of The Bastard Executioner .
“Most of the castles you see in the show are built. Giles Masters, who is our production designer, is truly a master. And most of what you see, including that 50 foot castle that is Castle Ventris, exists on our back-lot. Most of the interiors you see we built on stages. We have four different stages in Wales that we do the show in. I was really kind of blown away by what we got for value and for craft in the UK.”
Castle’s almost done. Cue The Executioner! #TBX pic.twitter.com/tRkvK59P39
— Paris Barclay (@Harparbar) April 4, 2015
Finally, during a chat with Monsters & Critics , Kurt Sutter explained what drew him from Sons of Anarchy into The Bastard Executioner .
“My mandate, as it was on Sons, is that the violence — as absurd as it could be sometimes on Sons — always came from an organic place. For every violent act, there were ramifications. That’s my same mandate here… Yes, it’s a medieval setting, and the laws in terms of punishment were brutal and heinous. That’s a reality of the world. And there are ways to portray that violence that don’t make it openly gratuitous. Anything that happens — be it a battle sequence, or an execution, or a torture scene — comes out of story. And it always has some ramification.”
Yes, we hope those ramifications do not meet a dead end for many, many years to come. May The Bastard Executioner not be executed any time soon!
[Photo: Frederick M. Brown, Ian Gavan / Getty Images]
