Newsday
9 October 2003.
PICK OF THE WEEK
By Noel Holston
Masterpiece Theatre:
Warrior Queen
Sunday, 9 p.m., WNET/13
What is this? "Babe-heart"? A "Xena" for history professors? " Conan the Estrogenarian?" All of the above, actually. As "Masterpiece Theatre" host Russell Baker explains in his introduction to "Warrior Queen," Boudica, also known as Boadicea, was the female leader of Britain's Iceni tribe who led a revolt against her country's Roman occupiers in the first century A.D. and did some serious damage. There's a statue to her memory in London, in the shadow of Big Ben, but where historical fact about her ends and legend begins is a hard pinpoint.
She almost certainly wasn't as pretty as Alex Kingston, the British actress best known for her role as Dr. Elizabeth Corday on "ER," but Kingston swings a broad sword as persuasively as she wields a scalpel, so who are we too argue? Anyway, who wants a homely Boudica when she and the rest of her war- prone, Viking-like people already look as though they could use a good scrub- down at one of their occupiers' celebrated baths? This may be he grimiest movie about early England since "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
According to Andrew Davies' script, Boudica's husband, King Prasutagus (Steve Waddington), made peace with the Romans because he was sick of bloodshed and because the emperor, Claudius, was a shrewd and fairly reasonable politician. (Longtime "Masterpiece Theatre" watchers will delight in seeing the stammering hero of "I, Claudius" again, even though he's now played by a different actor, Jack Shepherd.) But when both leaders die mysteriously and Nero (portrayed as a despicable, psychotic brat by Andrew Lee-Potts) takes charge of the Roman Empire, life in Britannia takes a vicious turn. When Boudica protests the Romans' taking slaves, she's flogged and forced to watch the rape of her two daughters. She unites the usually quarrelsome tribes and they go after the Romans like furies.
The most surprising thing about "Warrior Queen," considering the history of "Masterpiece Theatre," is that the action sequences are more credible than the dialogue. Davies, for some reason, has a Roman emissary telling Prasutagus he'd better "play ball" and Claudius declaring himself a "broad-strokes" kind of guy. Such phrases don't belong in an 18th century story, much less a first. But the fighting scenes have a scope and ferocity that approaches that of big-screen movies such as "Braveheart" and "Gladiator," and the sequence in which Boudica and her army of men, women and really scary children take their first Roman garrison is so eerie and merciless, you will simultaneously feel her tribe's exhilaration and the legionnaires' terror.