[Hugo Blick’s revelatory series is a gorgeous, glorious new take
on the old west – a lawless land where no one can hear you, or
anyone in your way, scream. What matters is that the dehumanization
and massacres of the Native Americans, upon whose suffering the New
World was built, is not forgotten but ever present.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE ENGLISH REVIEW – EMILY BLUNT’S SWEEPING WESTERN IS A RARE,
SENSATIONAL MASTERPIECE  
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Lucy Mangan
November 10, 2022
The Guardian
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_ Hugo Blick’s revelatory series is a gorgeous, glorious new take
on the old west – a lawless land where no one can hear you, or
anyone in your way, scream. What matters is that the dehumanization
and massacres of the Native Americans, upon whose suffering the New
World was built, is not forgotten but ever present. _

Harrowed souls … Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer in The English,
Photograph: Diego López Calvín/2022 The English © Drama
Republic/BBC/Amazon Studios

 

irst and foremost – don’t let the moony opening of The English
(“It was in the stars … And we believed in the stars, you and
I”) put you off. It is completely unrepresentative of the six hours
that follow and I want you to follow them.

The English (BBC Two [[link removed]]),
written and directed by Hugo Blick, is a revisionist western further
revised. We are in 1890, the last days of settlement of the old west
and our all-but-silent hero is Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a Pawnee
native and former scout for the US army cavalry – doubly displaced
by the settlers’ theft of his homeland and what his people see as
his betrayal of it. He is on his way to Nebraska to stake a claim to
the acres he is owed for his army service, despite warnings that the
white men in charge will never honour their debt.

Our heroine is Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt), who arrives at a
remote hostelry in Kansas from England, on the trail of the man she
holds responsible for her son’s death. There she finds the manager,
Mr Watts (Ciarán Hinds, in the most terrifying of all his terrifying
modes), in the process of torturing Eli. She tries to buy his safety
but is beaten for her trouble. It becomes clear that news of her
vengeful intentions has gone before her and that Watts is under
instructions to kill her. The murder will be pinned on Eli.

One semi-mutual rescue and at least four bloody deaths later, their
fates – along with his quest and her revenge narrative – have
become firmly intertwined. As they cross the plains in search of their
different ideas of peace, the relationship between these two lost and
harrowed souls becomes deeper and more tender in a way that avoids and
transcends mere romance. By the end it is infused with yearning, that
rare and vanishing sensation in a world where nothing is forbidden any
longer, which helps give the series the edge of grandeur the genre
always seeks.

The plot surrounding the emotional core is convoluted. I have faith
that were I to map all its parts it would make perfect sense but I
would genuinely need to sit down with a paper and pencil, and possibly
a cartographer, to do so.

But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that along the way we
meet a plethora of picaresque characters (special mention to Nichola
McAuliffe as the murderous Black Eyed Mog) who evoke the pitilessness
of the old west and illustrate Blick’s consideration of how many of
us would remain sane, and morally sound, in a lawless land where –
for hundreds of miles at a time – no one could hear you, or anyone
who got in your way, scream.

What matters is that the dehumanisation and massacres of the Native
Americans, upon whose suffering the New World was built, is not
forgotten but ever present, in Eli’s story, in the charred remains
of encampments, in the cruelty of old soldiers they meet, in the
stories of the people they seek shelter with. It’s not the wholesale
corrective some will want, but you could say the frontier is being
moved.

What matters is that although you might lose track of the details, the
plot never becomes impenetrable or the performances less than
compelling. Spencer, best known for playing the werewolf Sam Uley in
the Twilight movies, is a revelation – strong and silent, but also
seething with frustration, intelligence, grief and the rage of a good
man forced into terrible compromises. Blunt is at her best yet, giving
us a woman made brave and undauntable by resolve, powered by a secret
whose late reveal ties much of what was beginning to feel like sprawl
back tightly together again.

And then there’s Rafe Spall as David Melmont, with a performance
just this side of demented, and quite perfect as a truly diabolic
villain – the kind who can reach across the open plains to master
the lesser fiends, the willing weak and the good men with no choice
and cast the net around an approaching nemesis and bring her down.

Blick’s script is as spare and gorgeous as the landscape. If he
could have spent some of the time afforded the plot machinations on
interrogating more intensively the myths of the Old West, the colonial
impulse, the difference between retribution and justice and the other
questions his western raises, the ambition that is everywhere in it
would have been even more gloriously realised. But it remains a
sweepingly wonderful thing.

* the English
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* Native Americans
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* Indigenous peoples
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* indigenous representation
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