BBC fans fume over 'massively disappointing' new historical drama

A much-anticipated historical drama landed on BBC One on Sunday evening. But just minutes in, fans all made the same complaint as they pointed out some key issues with the new programme.

Starring James Norton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as rival kings Harold Godwinson and William of Normandy, King & Conqueror depicts the build-up to the Battle of Hastings. The eight-part series sees the two noblemen meet for the first time at the coronation of King Edward in England, where Harold's warnings of treachery are ignored. The first 50-minute episode saw William arrive in England for a key royal wedding, sowing the seeds of a titanic rivalry in some gruesome scenes. However, just minutes into the programme, fans online shared that they were already feeling disappointed. One wrote on X/Twitter: "Vikings was a great example of how to create a realistic and engaging historical action drama. King & Conqueror is typical BBC nonsense and utterly unrealistic. Why do they always do this?"

One more penned: "I wanted to like King and Conqueror, being a history nerd, but yet again the BBC have managed to f*** that up with the inaccuracies and being unrealistic."

Another added: "5 episodes in to King and Conqueror ... massively disappointing... *SIGH*," while a third complained: "Episode 1 of 'King and Conqueror' on channel 1 right now, dialogue is terribly bland. Nearly finished reading Ivanhoe and its characters speak such clever, tastefully antiquated English that it puts this to shame."

Meanwhile, other fans thoroughly enjoyed it. On IMDB, one fan enthused: "The first episode felt like prime Game of Thrones. Two great protagonists who were great in every scene (William and Harold).

"Edward's mother was a great character. The Earl of Wessex was enticing. It was an amazing end to the episode, and now I am very excited for the rest of the season. The action was very good, and all of the acting was fantastic."

Ahead of releasing the show, when asked what research went into it, lead writer Michael Robert Johnson told the BBC: "First of all, it was reading accounts from the time. Or accounts of accounts from the time!"

He continued: "They're all kind of contradictory, but it was a question of reading enough to work out what the interesting truths of the story were, the ones that people agreed on, and working out how that could be moulded into a story because you can't tell a straight documentary version.

"You can't just dramatise the facts because the peaks and troughs of the emotions are never in the right place.

"To me, the most important thing is: what do the audience get out of this? We're asking them to invest eight hours of their lives, so how do we give them the best piece of entertainment we can from this incredible true story?

"And the second part of the research was trying to read as much about how the world would have been and get a good idea of what existed and what didn't."