Shows like this literally suck the brain cells from your noggin.
Yet another silly medieval "period" piece that basically espouses that all the dark ages needed was an anachronistically "strong" female character, a politically retarded (though dialogue constantly claims otherwise) clergyman and some non-anachronistic (sarcasm) desirous gazes between commoner and noble to "fix" things up to some sort of christian theocratic utopia. If only medieval people dropped what they were doing and subscribed to "truth, justice and the american way" man, things would have been awesome! We have our "strong" female lead, whose brilliant superiority of intellect allows her to be the first in history to conceive, on a whim, in the 12th fricking century AD (roughly the 92nd century of civilization), of the possibility of a MIDDLEMAN. I especially love the drawn out scene where the shephard pauses in disbelief and confusion and is like "Wait... I sell the sheep to you... you transport it... sell it at another town... with higher demand... for a profit?!?! This is genius, we shall call you a Nerchant... no wait, a Merkant... no, I've got it... A FRICKING merchant, among the oldest professions in history. This is the classic example of what I call the Elizabeth Swan device (from Pirates of the Caribbean, where we're led to believe that a Governor's daughter has a superior knowledge of naval tactics and combat than a crew of veteran fricking pirates). And by "strong" I also mean, being constantly surprised that women were treated as inferior to men in her time, which apparently surprises her... every time... and leads to her shooting her mouth off in situations that would probably leave her raped and bleeding in the gutter, in reality. But apparently we're supposed to respect her because she: consorts with servants (Oh yah, an Earl's daughter and a mason's daughter would totally hang out back then), whines every time people have a medieval sensibility about women (did it ever occur to her that maybe the better solution is to let her BROTHER barter for the price of wool and maybe to save her medieval feminist revolution until there were less pressing matters on her plate) and won't kill another human being (so the guy's just raped you, he's fast asleep, you grab his dagger and... flee through the secret passage?!?!). But this show's not to be outdone, they've also got a common mason who's apparently dead confident that his radically new feats of architecture and engineering is structurally sound, all this without even a rudimentary understanding of math, experience in grand architectural work or, likely, the ability to even read. Kingsbridge is lucky indeed, I'm pretty sure there's no way that wouldn't have ended with the whole thing collapsing and a decade of man hours and quarried stone being lost. This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg: lesser nobleman raping Earl's daughters with apparently not expectation of ruthless bloody reprisal; chainmail wearing, sword wielding princesses (are you fricking kidding me?); etc. Just dumb, through and through.
What is it about these Harlequin romance type dealies that makes them want to set it in medieval times, yet finds, essentially, every singe aspect of medieval life and society "inconvenient" to their plot? Just set it in modern day Manhattan and you're good. Yeesh. Any production that represents a far flung historical period as black and white versus an enormous and subtle landscape of grey area is a waste of good money and a deliberate subversion and revision of our society's colored past.