Following the cancellation of Atlantis in 2015, the BBC is heading back into ancient Greek mythological territory with this new series about the Trojan War cycle of Greek myth – that is, stories about the build up to the war between Greeks and Trojans, about the fall of the city, and the homecomings and travels of the various survivors. One of the central decisions any screen adaptation of the Trojan War cycle has to make is: gods or no gods? While other cycles from Greek mythology would make little sense without the involvement of Zeus, Hera, Hades and the others, it is quite possible to lift the gods out of the Trojan War story all together. The religion remains – human characters can still make decisions based on what they think the gods want. But the central actions of the characters, whether they relate to love, war or family, can all be explained purely through human motivations if the creators choose, as they were in Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film, Troy. In this series, the creative team have gone in a different direction. The gods do not appear in scenes by themselves, hanging around Olympus in gold and white frocks as they did in the 1981 Clash Of The Titans and, indeed, the 2010 Clash Of The Titans. They appear on screen and we are given visual images of them. However, over the course of the first episode, only one mortal actually sees them – no other human beings seem to see them or be aware of their presence. Whether any other mortal characters will see them will become clear as the story moves over to concentrate on the Greeks in the second episode, but as long as the gods have no separate scenes and are witnessed by only one or two characters, the possibility remains that they exist only in the minds of these characters, and not, in fact, in reality at all. The production values here are of a high standard and the set design looks great, blending various elements of Greek and Near Eastern imagery. The nobles reclining under shelter on the sand of the beach was an especially nice image. The costume design is, for the most part, equally lavish, though the odd choice does take you out of the show a bit – just why is Helen wearing all those feathers, and what was Priam thinking when he carefully tended that moustache?! The main threat to this series at the moment is a fairly common one – the worry that the series is taking itself a bit too seriously. This is unsurprising considering that one of the issues Atlantis had was not taking itself seriously enough, but it wouldn’t hurt Troy: Fall Of A City to crack a smile here and there. We do see some glimpses of humour in some sequences, and it does work well to humanise these characters. Odysseus made a fleeting appearance in this first episode but we are likely to see more of him in the coming weeks – perhaps, as the wily trickster of Greek mythology, he will have a little more wit to him.
