While more cable channels are starting to get into the reality business, History has decided to go the opposite way, in a big way. After the critical success of its first scripted series, Hatfields & McCoys, History has commissioned a new 9-part scripted series, Vikings, which was made with a reported budget of over $40 million (twice what was spent on the 10-part epic that proceeds it, the stilted Mark Burnett-produced miniseries The Bible). What's interesting about the juxtaposition of the two series is how much Vikings actually includes theology into its own narrative, and not just of the Norse mythological kind. There isn't a great deal of history about the Vikings (since history was written primarily by those from whom they pillaged), but series writer and creator Michael Hirst (The Tudors) uses that to play with our perception of these fearsome Norsemen. The series follows the legendary Norse hero Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), who finds a fascination not in pillaging lands on summer raids (not that he is against it), but rather with the new cultures he comes into contact with as he plunders his way across Europe. Don't let that make you think this is a sissy series, though -- Vikings is brutal and broody and fast-paced. Hit the jump for more. Many have compared Vikings to Game of Thrones, and while Vikings is far more simplistic in its storytelling than HBO's fantasy drama, it shares its brutality (but not, thankfully, its sexposition). There's sex in Vikings, but there's far more in the categories of blood and guts, though the violence never reaches Spartacus levels of ludicrousness. But ...
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