Netflix brings the Vikings to life again in Vikings: Valhalla
Also this weekend: Netflix adds Tyler Perry’s A Madea Homecoming and Indian thriller The Fame Game, and Hulu thriller No Exit
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, February 25, and Saturday, February 26. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Vikings: Valhalla (Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): Created by Jeb Stuart, this historical action drama is a sequel to History’s Vikings. Set 100 years after the original, the tensions between the Vikings and the English royals have reached a breaking point. Leif Erikson (Sam Corlett), Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson), and Harald Hardrada (Leo Suter) set off on an epic journey across oceans and battlefields for survival and glory. In his review of the show, Dennis Perkins writes:
It’s a relief that, at least in this first of four planned seasons, Stuart doesn’t continue Michael Hirst’s sometimes cringe-worthy efforts to dramatize the first contact of the Norse and Native Americans. (Look for Corlett’s Leif the Lucky to pick that thread up if Netflix actually allows Vikings: Valhalla to continue.) But despite Stuart intermittently aping Hirst’s penchant for velvety court intrigue couched in cherry-picked, spottily recorded historical record, the broad strokes concerning religion here are especially explicit, as Vikings: Valhalla shows how bullying, swordpoint Christian expansionism inevitably trumps even viking berserker bravery.