Britannia — Jez Butterworth’s epic challenger to Game of Thrones’s crown

After the wild successes of his State-of-England play Jerusalem and Northern Irish drama The Ferryman , Jez Butterworth again turns to matters of national identity in the epic new series Britannia (Thursday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic/Amazon), this time looking at the cataclysmic impact of the Roman invasion.

The Romans are ruthless, highly disciplined and technologically superior, but they find themselves in an alien, demon-haunted land ruled by bloodthirsty queens and malevolent druids. Malignant Roman general Aulus Plautius sets about tormenting his captives with a jovial smirk. “Start crucifying the prisoners . . .  full show!”

If that were all there was to him, David Morrissey could play it in his sleep, but Aulus is also drawn inexorably to the dark magic of the druids. The interplay between the living and the dead is taken for granted, and who better to make the journey than a man already steeped in blood?

According to historian Ronald Hutton, “Graeco-Roman authors left two very different images of Druidry. To some, [the Druids] were philosophers, healers, peacemakers and benevolent mystics, to others a sinister breed of magus who presided over and encouraged barbaric rites of human sacrifice.”

Guess which version Butterworth goes for? There’s an obvious similarity here with Game of Thrones, but also, more obliquely, Apocalypse Now in the approach to the druids’ gruesome stronghold.

Butterworth enjoyably has his cake and eats it when it comes to the distant past. When characters say things like “Wow!” or “You could have fooled me”, that means they are Just Like Us. Flaying disobedient wives alive, not so much. Julian Rhind-Tutt turns cuckolded Celtic prince Phelan into a first-century hipster, drily wisecracking his way through an invasion. There’s a touch of Arthurian myth in crazed King Pellenor (Ian McDiarmid) while the real revelation is Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Divis, a trickster Merlin-figure with magic powers and a halitotic sense of mission. He’s off somewhere very strange: “Morrigan! Long time no see!” he barks at a baked rabbit.

The female characters are fantastically strong, from Zoë Wanamaker’s blood-curdling Queen Antedia to indomitable princess Kerra, played by Kelly Reilly like someone with the sun permanently in her eyes. Running wild in the woods and bugging the hell out of Divis is adolescent Cait, whose family have all been killed or captured. Eleanor Worthington-Cox is brilliant in the role, making Cait touching, admirable and annoying all at once. It’s weird that everyone can understand each other, and one captured warrior princess seems bizarrely over-acty; but then she comes clean. “I am Brenna, the goddess of war!” As Aulus Plautius might say: full show.

★★★★★

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