Scotland, 1714, and the air is heavy with script. Scowling laird Red Jacob MacKenzie (Peter Mullan) has snuffed it and the task of spelling out the significance of the tragedy has fallen, from no little height, on his eldest daughter.
“Clan MacKenzie is vulnerable,” wails Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater). “No successor has been named. Someone else, not of our blood, could come in and take charge of the clan; of our home, of our money, of our reputation, of everything we have!”
Agreement comes from the shadows, where a maid is hiding from the soundtrack’s bagpipes. “Your father’s untimely death has shaken us all, lass,” she whispers, tremulously. “What’s to come will be a trial …” [a pause, here, to allow for the arrival of the requisite italics] “… for all of us.”
She’s not wrong. Or rather, she’s nae wrang. For this is Outlander: Blood of My Blood, where the accents are as thick as the exposition and everyone is forced to stand in driving rain as slabs of dialogue are dragged by wincing Scotsmen across glens the colour of porridge.
It’s quite something. But then, so was – and, indeed is – Outlander, the unapologetically preposterous time-travelling romantic drama for which this unapologetically preposterous time-travelling romantic drama serves as a prequel. Outlander, for the unaccustomed, goes something like this: spirited second world war nurse Claire Randall (Caitríona Balfe) touches a standing stone while holidaying in the Scottish Highlands and is immediately transported back to 1743, where she falls in love with brooding soldier Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) and his hexagonal jawline. There follows much “love across the divide” melodrama, plus Jacobite-based skirmishes, VisitScotland-approved zoom-shots of cattle and soft-focus heritage buttocks. With the eighth (eighth!) and final series due to air next year, the decision has been made to expand the Outlander universe, lest the loss of muscular actors staggering between eras with their kilts around their ankles proves too much to bear.
And now? The fun continues with Outlander: Blood of My Blood, in which we meet the parents of both Jamie and Claire as they, too, #livelaughlove between past and present. Hang on a minute, though. Didn’t Outlander make it clear that Claire’s parents died in a car crash when she was a young child? It certainly did! And was there any mention of them having been involved in any type of time-travellery prior to this? There certainly was not! But never mind that because they’re alive now, banging on a first world war-era picnic blanket before conspicuously not dying in the aforementioned car crash. Instead, Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) skip merrily from the CGI wreckage before Julia promptly disappears into the same standing-stone time-portal that will, 30 years hence, whoosh-off her daughter. The end. Of episode one, at least. There’ll be more from the bangers as the series progresses. Or rather, as the series continues (“progresses” seems too strong a word for a production that contains the line, “My, my, a sassenach – and a fiery one!”).
For now, however, we are primarily concerned with Clan MacKenzie.
“There are plenty of folk eager to see the demise ae Clan MacKenzie!” warns adviser Ned Gowan (Conor MacNeill).
“I will bring glory tae Clan MacKenzie!” bellows Dougal MacKenzie (Sam Retford) directing the full-force of his 18th-century action-beard at shifty brother Colum (Séamus McLean Ross). Dougal is a Bad Lot. We know this because he shouts at boars and boffs a topless local over a barrel.
Older sister Ellen, meanwhile, has just met Brian Fraser, bastard son of Simon Fraser, formerly Lord Lovat of Beaufort (“I’m Brian Fraser, bastard son of Simon Fraser, formerly Lord Lovat of Beaufort”). Stunned by Brian’s (Jamie Roy) tousled bob, she agrees to secretly meet him on a local bridge. Will their forbidden love eventually lead to the birth of Outlander’s Jamie Fraser while widening the age-old rift between Clan MacKenzie and Clan Fraser? Aye.
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The good bits, then: the (only partly Scottish) cast’s accents, all of which are, to these Scottish ears, flawless. Similarly not-bad is the cinematography (spectacular) and the acting, which is uniformly decent.
But the script. Oh, the script. There is the line, “They say hatred and love are two sides of the same coin.” Someone else says, “Rest assured, this incident will not be forgotten easily, Dougal MacKenzie!” before ducking for cover as another girder of exposition crashes from the rafters. It is both atrocious and very watchable. But is it as atrocious and very watchable as Outlander?
For now, the jury is oot.
