Rewatch: Old TV

There's only one true vampire show for connoisseurs: Forever Knight. It is incredible--it's about a Roman general Lucius who becomes immortal and the man he adopts as his son, Roman style. Unfortunately, this guy is from medieval, Crusades-era Brabant in northern France, so he doesn't have the same values as Lucien Lacroix [who updated his name for the times]. Their contentious relationship is the best part of the show. Nigel Bennett is incredible.

This is leagues better than anything else I've seen in terms of supernatural shows, though I do feel like Mads Mikkelsen [on the Hannibal qualifies just in and of himself. And Rhys Ifans too, he's so almost eerie [who plays Mycroft on Elementary, the American Sherlock Holmes show].


One of the great parts of the show is that they understand that a Roman man would be coming from a totally different culture and understanding of the world. The Romans had different norms for family, adopted children, sex, dalliances with young men [by older men] and honor. The show has moments where it really presents the difficulties of cultural difference.


These worldview differences are discussed in the recent, interesting book about the move from pagan Roman culture to Christian culture, which is reviewed here, it's called From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. The book also is a good reminder that the Romans has a serious slave culture, one where you simply forced sex on people beneath you because you had the power. This wasn't seen through the lens of 'Christian sinful behavior' until that turn in history began.

The show also is a great way to spark an interest in the area of Brabant, Pompeii, more info here and medieval history, not to mention the Crusades. There were many, and they all had different people, reasons and outcomes. It's very interesting.