Will The Real Knight Please Stand Up?
Steven Knight is a puzzling figure.
He’s written the wonderful idiosyncratic Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises and Pawn Sacrifice.
He’s also written some terrible movies that include the pedestrian surveillance-state piece Closed Circuit (what a title!) and a bizarre adaptation of the color-by-numbers fantasy novel, The Seventh Son.
He’s directed both 2013’s masterpiece Locke and 2019’s travesty, Serenity.
The dismal failure of Serenity, which I reviewed right here on this very website, is probably the reason why he’s going to be focusing much more on television.
I would say almost exclusively on television because no one is ever going to let him direct a major motion picture again.
But The BBC Will Let Him Produce TV
Variety is announcing that the BBC has ordered six episodes of SAS: Rogue Heroes which will be based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre.
Macintyre was given privileged access to the SAS’s secret archives to write his account of its history.
Which means it’s an authorized whitewash of their actual history.
The show will explore the thinking that led to the creation of a new form of combat in the deserts of North Africa during World War II that would go on to, in the words of Winston Churchhill, “set [occupied] Europe ablaze.”
The description continues, describing SAS:RH as showing:
The glory, action and camaraderie at the heart of this story and delve into the psychology of the flawed, reckless but astonishingly brave group of maverick officers and men who formed the SAS in the darkest days of World War II.
Ah, more “flawed” male characters. Does this mean that they were racist?
Because back then, almost everyone was what the BBC would today call “racist”.
Perhaps they had sex with a lot of women and didn’t telegram them?
Or maybe they slapped some women. Because that happened in the 1940s.
Everyone was slapping everyone back then.
According to Knight:
“This will be a secret history telling the story of exceptional soldiers who decided battles and won wars only to then disappear back into the shadows. We will shine a light on remarkable true events informed by the people who shaped them.”
Let’s hope Steven Knight can do hard men better than David Ayers.
