Just watched the pilot...yikes, where to start...

As a big fan of the Richard Lester movies, I glanced at this show when it was on BBC and said 'no thanks.'

A friend of mine can't stop gushing about it so I thought, "Oh, what the heck" and gave the pilot a try.

Yikes.

OK, I get why it's popular. Lots of sex, good looking men wearing lots of studded leather, Peter Capaldi. If you know nothing about French history, and don't care about anachronism, yeah, I get why this show was popular.

But, geez.

OK, let's start with the costumes. The women's costumes are kind of bargain-basement, but not bad.

But the men - why in the heck are all the men wearing leather uniforms? LEATHER UNIFORMS?! I get it looks sexy and steampunk, but it is, of course, 100% inaccurate. As has been pointed out, the Musketeers did not run around in studded leather. Cardinal Richelieu did not run around in studded leather. NOBODY ran around in studded leather, for much the same reason they don't do it today. It's hot, it doesn't wear well, and an entire suit of it would be very expensive. The use of it in this show gives it a fantasy look, like a Game of Thrones wannabee. It's distracting.

Then there's the characterization. One way to tell good writing is when you can't give one character's dialogue to another character without it sounding wrong. In other words, you wouldn't write D'artagnan's dialogue to sound like Athos'. They're two distinctly different characters and should move, talk, and act very differently.

Well, they don't. With a few minor exceptions everybody's dialogue is interchangable. You could give Porthos' lines to Aramis, and Aramis' lines to D'artagnan, and nobody would know the difference. Bad writing.

Constance is written as a flinty badass for no apparent reason. Milady, of course, is evil. We know this because she struts around in a red dress with one shoulder constantly exposed.

Contrast all of this with Richard Lester's version and it's painful how little charm, humor, and color this version has. It's like they drained everything out of the story that made it unique and said, "Eh, just get four good-looking guys and put them in leather. Nobody cares about anything else!"

And the story of the pilot constantly misses opportunities to inform us about the characters. When Porthos and Aramis show up at Constance's and demands D'artagnan join them to find the guy who framed Athos, D'artagnan just...gets up and joins them. Doesn't even argue. We never get an explanation as to why D, who still thinks Athos killed his father, would just up and join these two strangers. They don't even ask.

And then, later on, the three dudes are lurking outside the camp of the guy who framed Athos and are wondering how to get in. D'artagnan says "I have an idea."

Cut directly to Constance, in a red dress, pretending to be a prostitute. No explanation as to how she got there, how much time has passed, or how they talked her into doing this. She's just...there.

That's when I put the brakes on. That scene made NO sense. They'd ridden a LONG time to find that camp. What did they do, ride all the way back to town, find Constance, talk her into pretending to be a prostitute, find her clothes and makeup, rode all the way back to the camp and...how long did that take exactly? Hours? Another day? It made NO sense, and told me all I needed to know about how weak the writing in this series was going to be.

So, bleh. Bland characters (the king was pretty good, but everybody else is generic, and Capaldi is wasted as Richelieu who is played as your typical Political Aspiring Religious Figure), ridiculous costuming, and dull writing. After watching it, I'm surprised it made it 3 seasons. Well, maybe not. There is a market for steampunk fantasy I guess. Me, I'll go watch the Richard Lester version again.