Vikings

Our Review

History Channel’s epic that proved a cable network could make a saga. Travis Fimmel’s Ragnar Lothbrook, a farmer who becomes an earl, a king, a legend, and a cautionary tale, is one of TV’s great protagonists: a schemer who talks to gods (or doesn’t) and chews the scenery of history. The first four seasons track the Viking age’s expansion with real anthropological care: the raids on England, the settlements, the politics of Kattegat, the conversions and apostasies.

The peak is the season 4 arc when Ragnar, old, addicted, abandoned, returns to England one last time to die, and his death in the snake pit becomes the show’s masterstroke: the aftermath is planned from beyond the grave. Fimmel’s exit hurt, but the next generation carried it (Alex Høgh Andersen’s Ivar the Boneless is one of TV’s great crippled monsters, and the final season’s search for the Golden Land gives the saga a moving coda, landing on the shore of America). Skål.

Verdict: Watch it. The full arc of an age, discovery, conquest, decay, and the sea that outlasts them all.