The Death of KingsWhy you should be sorry you never watched NBC's biblical drama.
Posted Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009, at 2:17 PM ET
Next Tuesday, the day after Yom Kippur, NBC will release the first and only season of its biblical drama Kings on DVD. I assume the release date is a coincidence, but if you do happen to be atoning on Monday, you might want to take a few seconds to offer a brief apology—to NBC, to creator Michael Green, to star Ian McShane, to me—for not having watched the show. This sin of omission not only deprived you of one of the great television-watching pleasures of recent years but also deprived the few of us who did watch Kings of a second enthralling season.
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StumbleUponKings is a retelling of one of the Bible's most gripping episodes, the story of David and Saul. Aging King Saul and his young protégé battle for the throne, for the adoration of the people, for the love of the king's daughter, for the approval of the prophet Samuel, and for the blessing of God. The backdrop is a divided nation recovering from decades of war. Both men are heroic, both are flawed. It's a tale crammed with violence, sex, and intrigue. Why on earth did no one ever think to dramatize it before?
In Michael Green's version, King Saul of Israel has become King Silas of Gilboa, played by McShane, who makes an even better modern monarch than he was an Old West saloonkeeper. David, a shepherd in the biblical tale, is now "David Shepherd," who wins glory in the pilot episode by rescuing Silas' captured son Jack and disabling one of the enemy's unstoppable tanks. (The tank, of course, is called the "Goliath.") The other star of Kings is the kingdom itself. Gilboa is the most original creation of the show, a nation that is modern and Westernized in every respect—cell phones, cable news, nightclubs—except for one: It is ruled by a totalitarian monarch, and that monarch is literally blessed by God.
Kings is gorgeous to watch and thrillingly strange to listen to. Green conjures a world that is just different enough from ours to mesmerize. There's a stunning Scandinavian-modern throne room (actually a jazz concert hall in the Time Warner building); a capital city that mingles old New York buildings with sharp-edged computer-generated skyscrapers; and everywhere there is the vivid flag of Gilboa—a butterfly silhouette on a field of orange. (With its royal conniving and melodrama, Kings very much resembles I, Claudius, but the Rome of I, Claudius looked leaden and fake compared with the elegant magnificence of Gilboa.)
The dialogue, meanwhile, is unlike anything I've ever heard on TV. King Silas' vocabulary is modern American English, but his syntax is weird and stilted, words jumbled and juggled until everything sounds backward. Check out this snippet from Silas' speech marking the beginning of Judgment Day, when the king rehears 10 judicial cases of his choosing:
We made laws where there were none. We mined justice from sand. … And today the last recourse, for those of you who feel themselves denied fair address of grievance, 10 cases, here selected. I alone will adjudicate, divine wisdom my only counsel, and my gavel sound only after my words correct what is not right.
On the page it looks corny. But intoned by McShane, invested with the majesty he convincingly brings to the role, these pronouncements are riveting. I could listen to him all day.
Naturally, one of the pleasures of Kings, particularly for a Bible junkie, is observing where the show is faithful to the original story and where it tinkers. In the Bible, for example, Saul's son Jonathan has a curiously homoerotic relationship with David (they're always kissing and confessing their love). Kings picks up on that subtext and runs with it: Its Prince Jack is gay, but he's closeted. In at least one instance, Kings actually improves on the original. The story of David and Saul features one of the Bible's most maddening lapses in logic. In the biblical story, young David first appears as Saul's court musician, the only person who can soothe the king's madness. But a couple of chapters later, when David defeats the giant Goliath, Saul has no idea who the boy is—even though David is supposedly his most beloved servant. Kings cleans up this mess with a clever narrative move that pays homage to the original while avoiding the confusion it's inspired in generations of readers.
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The real tragedy of Kings, at least, for me, was imaging what the second season would have brought. The real drama of 1 Samuel was in the second half of the book - David and Michal separated, with David on the run for his life and even fighting for the Philistines, but still loyal to his King despite the grievous injuries caused by him.
I really think NBC dropped the ball on this. Kings was smartly written, directed, and acted - Ian McShane was an absolutely fantastic Silus - and NBC's treatment of the series with its scheduling was pretty bad (Sunday, then Saturday, then abruptly pulling it from the schedule to finish its run during summer).
But then again, that was before I knew I wanted to see Jay Leno at 10PM. All is forgiven!
-- Colage
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My roommate and I are part of that lone 1.3 million that watched the show until the end. We looked forward to it every week and it earned the number one spot in my TiVo Season Pass list. The last show I missed as much when it was cancelled was Star Trek and we know how THAT turned out for NBC.
Even the things that didn't work on the show were brave and interesting. Rarely have I seen TV that had such intellectual heft and thought. Even the language, as the article mention, though English, became as if from another world. I am sad the show is gone and there won't be any more.
-- MacAdvisor
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I watched Kings all the way through, and given the last scene of the show (David Shepherd running into Gilboa trailed by a butterfly) I still hope there might be a movie or a pickup on a cable network.
The show was absolutely marvelous. Great acting, great writing, and enough of a variance from the source material to be thoroughly modern, engrossing, and mystifying. While there were some short cuts (like when Jack's "fiancé" just disappears in an off-screen car accident) I thought it was one of the best shows of recent years. However, along with Life, Life on Mars, Jericho, Pushing Daisies, and other shows that tell a story and require the viewer to think and invest...well, it just doesn't seem to be the hip thing these days.
NBC missed an opportunity to keep a great show on the air. I often wonder how long Hill Street Blues would last under current NBC management.
-- Bwana
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