The Last Kingdom | Series 1 Patreon Trailer Reaction 

and i liked vikings a lot, really fell off a cliff after ragnar died, but overall good show. last kingdom is just better. better writing, better acting, better cinematography, better costumes, better battle sequences that actually make logical sense and aren't a complete clusterfuck of hundreds of people having 1 on 1 fights in a field. and it's a better depiction of the history. both shows try to portray both the saxons and the danes in a fair light but last kingdom does a better job. and it's more interesting due to the main character having strong ties to both cultures. the best part about vikings for me was ragnar's interactions with ecgbert. once those 2 characters died, the show just wasn't remotely the same thing. but last kingdom keeps a similar dynamic running throughout the whole thing. a lot less downtime than vikings too. vikings had a lot of really boring filler. like every season had its A plotline and a bunch of B or C plotlines. everything in the last kingdom is kinda woven together, all the threads connect by the end of the season. it was based on a book series written by a successful novelist who truly knows how to write fiction, so it succeeds for all the same reasons the first half of game of thrones succeeded. it's not a contest but if it was, last kingdom wins my vote in almost every area. the only area where vikings really beats the last kingdom is in the attractiveness of its characters/actors. like there's no katheryn winnick in TLK lol. but i suppose it's more historically accurate, most people back then should presumably have had visible cavities, missing limbs, and like... plague boils on their forehead

one of the highlights of vikings for me was the siege of paris. really excellent battle sequence. but all of last kingdom's battle scenes are in that category, where the strategies actually make sense and you can actually see the characters executing little tactical maneuvers rather than just diving headfirst into a pile of meat and swords. even the relatively small battle scenes. but it also has larger scale conflicts like sieges. only the sieges in the last kingdom are historically accurate, they're not hour-long affairs where the gates are quickly breached one way or another. in the very first season one of the characters is stuck as a hostage in a besieged fort for like, weeks or months. i don't know if that kind of thing matters to you but for me it's more engaging when a film or show includes subtle elements of realism, not just for the sake of being realistic but because they increase the depth of the narrative and the drama. like there's a reason those things are considered "realistic." it's because they happen in reality. reality is really messy and complicated so it's a good model to use if you're trying to create a complex narrative. you don't have to, though. you can add a bunch of complex elements that are completely fictional and they can fill that void. that's what tolkien and george RR martin did. a story just needs consistent and believable complexity, throughout it. it can't just be complex sometimes and then other times the plot just falls into place because it's convenient. that's why the ending of game of thrones fell apart. the complexity of the story was already established as believable, so it was a huge disappointment when everyone suddenly became retarded for the sake of moving the plot forward as fast as humanly possible. vikings missed a lot of elements of realism and it didn't add much in the way of fictional complexity. there are some supernatural elements, like the gods, but they don't really aid in making the narratives or the characters' relationships more complex. the only ones that really succeed in this role are athelstan's implied divinity, and ragnar's self-sacrifice motivating his sons to invade england, with help from odin. but they don't add that much complexity compared to all the tiny details in the last kingdom or a song of ice and fire. as for barbarity, i don't think it's really a good metric to judge a show by, but the last kingdom is not some kind of children's show lol. even the trailer, which is pretty measured compared to the show itself, showed uhtred throwing a severed head. it's not barbaric compared to the blood eagle shown in vikings, but the show in general does not censor violence and pretty much every episode has some kind of combat in it. i mean, the entire show is about the vicious war between the saxons and the danes, it's a bit weird to assume it's not gonna be a violent show. i'm not really sure which is more extreme but even if vikings was objectively more extreme that's a pretty weird excuse not to watch a show.

Rome is higher but not by much.

Agre 100%, much better than vikings. My favorit show.