I became a TV critic in 1998, at heart if not in practice. The occasion was the world premiere of Merlin, a two-part NBC miniseries starring Sam Neill and Isabella Rossellini. The catalyst was a thrown axe that defied the laws of physics, zipping forward as if on legs rather than tipping end over end. I was raised on Full House and professional wrestling and had basically no standards at all, but even I understood that there was no point in watching further. Some mistakes are so damning, so indicative of incompetence, that they demolish an entire project.
Viewers of Outlander: Blood of My Blood will search in vain for such an error. On Starz’s latest offering, every wall is realistically grimed, and every plaid is laid just so. In fact, the program is so handsomely made that its genre excesses nearly vanish, hiding behind peat fires or in the folds of a kilt. Closer inspection reveals a plot that is often ridiculous, but what is a plot to rocks and mountains? The vistas, the accents, and, oh!, the extraordinary costumes. It is very good to be back in Scotland.
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Blood of My Blood is, of course, a prequel. Its parent, the original Outlander, tells the story of Claire Randall, an English nurse who travels through time while vacationing in the Scottish Highlands. The new series steps back a generation to show us Claire’s parents and those of Jamie Fraser, Claire’s hulking and dashing Scottish husband. The setting: Castle Leoch and other northern keeps. The time: 1714, with an interlude in World War I. The question: much the same as the earlier show. Can love survive distance, violence, and the interruption of the life in which it was formed?
Of the four main characters, the most interesting is Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), a postal censor in 1917 London. While blotting soldiers’ letters one day, Julia comes across a missive from Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine), a lieutenant on the Western Front. Before long, the pair are exchanging love notes, marrying, and, in what will prove to be a family tradition, falling through stones into Jacobite Scotland. Whereas Claire went alone in the original series, Julia and Henry go in quick succession. Nevertheless, their paths diverge. Julia, captured at once, is sold to Lord Lovat (Tony Curran), the leering head of Clan Fraser. Henry, luckier by far, becomes a “bladier” (i.e., legal adviser) for Clan Grant, a family of significant ambition and means.
This is intricate storytelling, pulled off smoothly. So is Blood of My Blood‘s second main thread, in which the machinations of Clan Mackenzie are laid bare. Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater), beloved daughter of the late clan “laird,” has fallen in love with Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), Lovat’s illegitimate son. Will the two be allowed to wed, or will Ellen’s brothers, quarrelling over their father’s chair, bargain her off to other suitors to improve their chances?
Like most prequels, Blood of My Blood contains its share of “young Darth Vader” moments. Just as Anakin Skywalker is no mere adolescent to those in the know, so Outlander has already revealed whom Ellen will marry and whether Julia and Henry make it home. To be sure, this flavors the new series: The drama, for many viewers, will be in the how, not the what and where. Yet the production is well-cast and beautifully paced and structured. Few audience members will complain of apprehension too much.
If Blood of My Blood has a flaw, it stems from a different part of the series’s heritage. Drawn, like Outlander before it, from the novels of Diana Gabaldon, the new show is, at heart, an erotic “romantasy” for ladies, however much the occasional husband may enjoy tagging along. As such, the production ties itself in knots trying to navigate the contradictory (and largely imagined) desires of American womandom. The setting may be Scotland, but the perspective belongs to the good old United States of America.
Take, for example, the character of Ellen, who opens the show with a fiery quip about marriage and “break[ing] free of certain chains.” If Scotswomen talked that way in the early 18th century, I’ll eat my haggis. Yet even our heroine’s protofeminism, clearly meant to mark her as a figure of strength, can’t survive a five-minute encounter with the dreamy Brian. One minute, the young woman is planning her future in the MacKenzie Clan power structure, and the next, she’s swooning on the heather, having glimpsed a man who turns all of her previous assurances to dust.
In a sense, this is conservative plotting: Ellen was made for the life she first rejects. Less reassuring is the series’s vision of masculinity, which casts far too many men as possible despoilers and ravishers. Like the original Outlander, Blood of My Blood is believably frank about the possibility of assault in the benighted past. Why, then, does Brian ask for “consent” during an Episode 3 encounter? Because he’s handsome! As Lovat’s behavior plainly indicates, Brian won’t have learned sexual ethics at home, nor is a Georgian-era Scotsman likely to have been catechized in #MeToo. At work instead is a kind of half-baked feminist phrenology. Ugly men are rapists, and attractive ones ask nicely. Perhaps the new show has an improbable axe throw of its own.
Of course, these are minor quibbles, proposed by a man (strike one) obsessed with politics (strike two). Without question, Blood of My Blood has compelling arcs and characters to go with its silly ones, most notably a sibling rivalry that is as fascinating as any relationship on TV. As previously hinted, fans of the original series know which of Ellen’s brothers emerges victorious: burly Dougal (Sam Retford) or clever, crippled Colum (a superb Séamus McLean Ross). But it doesn’t matter because the duel itself is more important than the outcome, and I plan to keep watching it.
Graham Hillard is an editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.