This episode aired 12th Jan 18 along with the second episode. The story is set at the end of the 16th Century in Seville when the city was the point of entry to and from the new world.
Mateo goes to Seville to search for the son of a recently deceased friend. With nothing more than a name and a brief description he has to search through the backstreets and slums of the city whilst avoiding the Spanish inquisition and at the same time the Plague begins to spread.
The dirt, disease and misery are all ever-present and try to give an idea of the harsh reality of life in the middle ages for the vast majority of people. The script is clunky with rehashed ideas of how to show things we take for granted today where knew and unknown at the time (tomatoes? can you eat them? - No, they're poisonous. This is chocolate, it's new from the New World: it tastes great). No one is happy, no one laughs. Life is miserable - unlike today when poor people look for happiness where they can, here they just mope around and get on with being miserable. Seville is gray and dark - I doubt it really was. As this is a drama, I can understand the gravitas, but we know it simply isn't true. Ordinary people did laugh, they went to the taverns and sang and made the best out of their lives. The fact that everyone seems to whisper or mumble their lines annoys me the most. -this is very serious I must talk so I can't really be heard by the people I'm talking to - seems to be the idea. I don't really know where the series is going, but this episode only helps to kill time. I've given it a four for the setting and giving us an idea of what life was like for ordinary people in an important European city of the time.
The dirt, disease and misery are all ever-present and try to give an idea of the harsh reality of life in the middle ages for the vast majority of people. The script is clunky with rehashed ideas of how to show things we take for granted today where knew and unknown at the time (tomatoes? can you eat them? - No, they're poisonous. This is chocolate, it's new from the New World: it tastes great). No one is happy, no one laughs. Life is miserable - unlike today when poor people look for happiness where they can, here they just mope around and get on with being miserable. Seville is gray and dark - I doubt it really was. As this is a drama, I can understand the gravitas, but we know it simply isn't true. Ordinary people did laugh, they went to the taverns and sang and made the best out of their lives. The fact that everyone seems to whisper or mumble their lines annoys me the most. -this is very serious I must talk so I can't really be heard by the people I'm talking to - seems to be the idea. I don't really know where the series is going, but this episode only helps to kill time. I've given it a four for the setting and giving us an idea of what life was like for ordinary people in an important European city of the time.
