King and Conqueror: a BBC drama that struggles to shed light on 1066

The BBC’s new historical drama King and Conqueror takes on one of the most recognisable dates in English history: 1066. The Battle of Hastings is part of the national curriculum, stitched into our collective memory alongside the Blitz, the Tudors and the Industrial Revolution. It is a moment that shaped the English crown, the church, and the landscape of power. That should be fertile ground for drama. Yet what arrives on screen is a series that too often loses its way in the gloom.

The set-up is promising enough. James Norton plays Harold Godwinson, the Wessex nobleman destined to become England’s last Saxon king, while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau takes the role of William, the Norman duke preparing his own bid for power. The pair begin as uneasy allies across the Channel, bound by ambition but destined for collision on the battlefield at Hastings. Supporting them are Emily Beecham as Edith and Clémence Poésy as Matilda, along with a strong cast including Juliet Stevenson as the venomous Lady Emma.

What follows, however, is less epic tapestry than muddy sketch. Anglo-Saxon England is rarely explored on screen, and this could have been an opportunity to bring that shadowy period alive. Instead, the drama confines itself largely to tense conversations in darkened rooms and muddy roadsides. We glimpse very little of the world these figures were meant to rule. Compared with Wolf Hall, which made the Tudor court feel both vivid and intimate, King and Conqueror feels visually starved and narratively narrow.

The darkness is not just metaphorical. The series is lit with such extreme contrast that whole sequences sink into black. Viewers on laptops or televisions without perfect settings may struggle to make out who is speaking. This approach, increasingly familiar in BBC period dramas from Great Expectations to Jamaica Inn, seems less an artistic choice than a way to stretch production budgets. It aims for naturalism, a world of candlelight and shadows, but ends up obscuring the very story it wants to tell.

Performance-wise, Norton and Coster-Waldau bring gravity but not much dynamism to Harold and William. Their characters are portrayed as men weighed down by fate, but rarely as men of flesh and blood. Oddly, it is Eddie Marsan’s weary Edward the Confessor and Stevenson’s sharp-tongued Emma who feel most alive. The series is at its strongest when it allows these supporting characters to dominate, but they are too often left to one side.

That leaves King and Conqueror caught between ambition and execution. Its dialogue leans more towards fantasy drama than medieval chronicle, at times more Westeros than Wessex, yet its look is striving for authenticity. The clash between those instincts makes it a frustrating watch, all the more so when the source material is so inherently dramatic. 1066 was a year of rival claims, broken oaths and seismic change. Instead of embracing that energy, the show seems to smother it under murk.

The story of Harold and William still matters because it shaped the City of London as much as the wider kingdom. The aftermath of Hastings redefined property rights, civic life, and even the Tower that still dominates the skyline. It is ironic that a drama about such a pivotal year manages to make the world feel so small.

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