Stars: 1/5
Historical shows can be fun, especially those with a bit of magic in them, but I didn’t like “Troy: Fall of a City.” Generally, historical shows will reveal what sets them apart in the first episode or two. Unfortunately, the most interesting players in the story, the Greek gods, were mostly absent in this retelling of a story everyone knows yet no one remembers learning.
The gods are present, but things like prophecy and honor take the place of the direct intervention of the gods in the series. Although I don’t remember many of the details of the original story, I know the gods were more prominent. Without the gods playing major roles in the story, the show becomes another historical war series. No amount of sex and interpersonal intrigue is going to be more compelling than deities moving mortals like chess pieces.
There aren’t many likeable characters in “Troy: Fall of a City.” Most characters have their moments but are ultimately too inexcusably evil, so dense you’d have to bang their heads against walls to get their brains churning, or just plain annoying. Most of the Trojan royal family falls into those last two categories. I’ll give Artemis an honorable mention because we do only see her for about five seconds, but they’re the most electrifying five seconds of the show. More of that, please.
Once Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, I was already flashing back to the several versions of “Electra” I read last semester for my literary drama class. Helen and Paris going off to make whoopee in Troy because Aphrodite made a promise over a beauty contest knowing a war was inevitable had immeasurable consequences.
Paris is the whole reason everyone is in this mess, but he’s too stupid for me to really want to dig into him. You know what you do when you meet a trio of goddesses in a beauty contest presided over by Zeus in the forest? You politely say they’re all equally beautiful and go back to shepherding all day and canoodling with non-Helen girls on the side. If he had just minded his business, he and a whole city full of people wouldn’t have been slaughtered by Greeks because a king had his wife spirited away.
And speaking of said king, Menelaus really didn’t have to go to war over Helen. He didn’t even seem to like her that much. It was ultimately about honor and women being considered property. There’s about as many women as there are men in the world, so losing Helen wasn’t the end of the world until he decided it was — and only for Troy.
This series wasted eight hours of my life, watching them argue and fumble through warm, low light wondering when they would get on with it and die already. It’s hard to enjoy the journey when you already know it ends in the worst way possible. I also just didn’t care about Paris, who had the most screen time because he was the main character. I couldn’t care less about that frat shepherd turned prince and his woes. Cry me a river, Chad.
I could go on about all of the things that made this viewing experience one of the most acutely unenjoyable of my life. I’d say it’s at the bottom of my top 10 most hated shows. I recommend not wasting your time on “Troy: Fall of a City.” We know the beginning and the end, and almost nothing worth seeing happens in between.