Europe's Last Warrior Kings

Another well-done documentary by the BBC on one of Britain's most decisive eras, "1066: A Year to Conquer England" is docudrama as history and entertainment. Chronicling the build-up to the landmark Battle of Hastings and the battle itself to its aftermath the film features and highlights the individuals and events as Northwestern Europe headed to a showdown that would alter European and world history forever. Good acting and presentable battle scenes bring the past alive with interviews from historians providing further information to the events. Aside from a few misguided choices and an amusing tinge of pc the documentary is a watcher from start to finish. Compelling and thrilling this is an impressive series on one of history's most important and fascinating ages.

The year 1066 was a fascinating year, but this doc was very dull and bland. I have never thought that Dan Snow was that good a presenter or historian and consider his success mainly due to his father's influence. I saw one of his docs on the Battle of Britain and he clearly did not have any detailed, or even superficial, knowledge of the event. Compared to Michael Wood (say) he lacks charisma and the ability to inspire his audience.

This drama/doc contained many omissions and the tension /dialogue/drama between the three decent historians enacting the motives, thoughts and actions of the three main characters did not really work because it was all a bit insipid and wooden. Some good shots of armour, ships and the landscapes though.

Being a BBC production it had to be politically correct and make some characters black, which was not only irritating but undermined any credibility concerning the facts presented.

Give it a miss.

Anyone feel like at some point, probably during a battle scene in the show, that King Harold of England was going to bust out a camo-can Busch heavy and slam it while Enter the Sandman is playing?

When a "documentary" trying to be factual inserts a black actor as the right hand man to William, it completely undermines the entire credibility of what they are presenting and turns it into a joke. There were no Africans in England or Normandy at that time, and not for another 500 years at least. Why not use a talking pig? Or a little green man from outer space?

This documentary is about the fateful year 1066 and is composed of three separate parts:

1. An historical reconstruction of the events, with actors playing the main parts in costumes 2. Dan Snow, the presenter, visiting locations where the events took place, and 3. Three historians "playing" the parts of William, Harold, and Harald and who debate their strategies in what looks like a dimly lit cellar with a large interactive map of Britain

This last bit was quite bizarre and unnecessary since the strategies of the three kings could have been explained in a different way.

All this, interspersed with the occasional intervention of a guy who wrote a book about the Normans invasion based on an ancient book found in Brussels, made the rhythm of the documentary uneven.

Finally, as mentioned by others, the fact that in the reconstruction with actors, William's right hand was an African guy added a surreal touch to the whole documentary, seasoning it with an unnecessarily large portion of "woke".

Still, most likely that in the next documentary about William the Conqueror, the man himself will be from Senegal or Sudan.