Golden Axe
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Our Review
Every part of the pitch for Golden Axe sounds like a cash grab, and the show is smarter than its marketing. Co-created by Mike McMahan of Star Trek: Lower Decks with showrunner Joe Chandler, this adaptation of Sega’s 1989 beat em up releases all ten episodes at once on Paramount+ and plays the source material exactly right: as a shallow, gorgeous arcade toy that deserves affection rather than reverence.
The structure is the joke and the plot at once. The heroic trio, Ax Battler (Liam McIntyre), Tyris Flare (Lisa Gilroy), and Gilius Thunderhead (Matthew Rhys), hate each other enough to split the party, and the show cuts between their parallel quests while Death Adder keeps the Golden Axe. Rhys, unrecognizable and delighted, is the engine of the whole season, a drunk dwarf with a grievance for every occasion. The jokes fire at rapid, Rick and Morty velocity, which means some miss, but the ones that land, mostly by dissecting how video game logic would actually feel to live inside, are very good.
The back half finds emotional weight under the wisecracks, and episode five, which recreates the game’s own imagery as a plot device, is the kind of winking homage that could be insufferable and is instead the best hour here. It never pretends to be prestige. It is 22 minutes, funny, violent, and gone before you need a break.
Our score: 7/10. All ten episodes up now on Paramount+, ideal for one weekend.
