My own self

Really, don't ever. The amount of things that are different between the creators' combined sales-pitch to their network and sales-pitch to their fresh audience laying out premises, characters, relations and backstories and your average episode six months (or, if you're really lucky, six years) later are staggering. Sometimes, you hit something where the first episode is actually very telling (I'd say The West Wing is a very good example there), but it is the exception, not the rule. You cannot tell how a show can be by its pilot.


So it is thus dreadfully premature when I say I love Kings. It is the best pilot I've seen since Easy Money early last fall, and honestly, it's probably even better than that. The reasons? Well, let's list them.

It re-tells the story of King Saul and King David of the Old Testament, one of the truly great epics that is hidden in that treasure of a book. It has everything; war, intrigue, religion, politics, prophets, sex, scandal, divine music, great heroes and fallen Chosen Ones. This would be awesome all on its own. But Kings takes it one step further. A bold, stunningly daring step that I am still unsure if I approve of (I love period pieces), but that I'm loving nonetheless. It takes place in the modern world.

Not our modern world, but one with made-up countries and made-up rulers living in made-up cities fighting made-up wars. This is the big caveat that makes this change of venue possible, but that might also be the shows' failing. Will the average viewer be able to buy into a world that looks so similar to our own, but isn't? Time will tell.

The setting, however, is brilliant. It lets the show move all these incredible elements from the Old Testament into a modern situation, where the power of religion is matched by the power of the corporations, and where King Silas (Kings' King Saul) finds himself trapped in the middle at the same time as a young upstart named "David" is suddenly getting everybody's attention. They get to look at current, real-life issues, but do so in a context where we have people who have to wait for the king to rise before they get out of their chairs and Divine Revelations flaunted publicly by the same king of national television.

The show, thus, is extremely ambitious.

Now don't get me wrong. It isn't the strongest pilot I've ever seen. But it's a very, very, very good one. Very good one. And while you shouldn't judge a show by its pilot, I'm already all but ready to declare this my new favourite current show this spring when Battlestar Galactica finds its closure on Friday.

Oh, and by the way, I don't believe I mentioned, Kings has Ian McShane in the lead role.


Yeah, that's right. You're wasting precious time reading this when you could be watching McShane be a bloody king for a full double-episode. Why do you think I didn't mention it until now? You'd have never read all of this post if I opened with that.