"Gunpowder": review

L to R: Kit Harington as Robert Catesby, Edward Holcroft as Thomas Wintour, and Tom Cullen as Guy Fawkes

2017's "Gunpowder" is a three-part British miniseries originally produced for BBC One. It is about the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which a group of Catholics led by Robert "Robin" Catesby gather a huge store of gunpowder that they lay beneath the halls of the House of Lords with the intention of killing the Protestant king, most of the king's family, and all the leading lights of Parliament as retaliation for Anglican King James I's policies of repression that keep the English Catholics in hiding. In this era, as a result of those stringent policies, many English Catholics have become recusants, i.e., they refuse to worship as Anglicans, recusing themselves from Anglican church life to worship in private homes as faithful Catholics. Priests who minister to this recusant flock move about in secret, and many homes have been constructed with spaces in which to hide the clergy and their liturgical items should authorities come calling.

In the first episode, Robert "Robin" Catesby (Kit Harington) is at private worship with his older sister, Lady Dorothy Dibdale (Sian Philipps), his cousin Anne Vaux (American Liv Tyler with Arwen accent in place), the priest Father Henry Garnet (Peter Mullan), and others. Sir William Wade (Shaun Dooley) shows up at the property, banging on the door and looking for clandestine priests, who all quickly hide. Wade is let in and ominously begins to search the premises, eventually finding a hidden young priest, for whom Lady Dibdale bravely takes responsibility. She and the priest are both taken away and executed: Dibdale by crushing, and the young priest by evisceration. This is the final straw for Robin, who enlists the aid of his cousin Thomas Wintour (Edward Holcroft, looking like the lost twin of Matthias Schoenaerts), and others, including explosives expert Guy Fawkes (Tom Cullen). Father Garnet urgently counsels Robin against any murderous act of rebellion because, if the rebellion fails, the crown will only clamp down harder upon the country's Catholics. In desperation, Robin and Wintour head off to Catholic Spain to seek allies, but they are turned back by the Constable of Castille (Pedro Casablanc) who, on behalf of the Spanish crown, is seeking peace with England after a long war. As the episodes progress, Robin is eventually able to assemble a group of loyal rebels, with Guy Fawkes's knowledgeable presence giving some hope of success with the explosives. Anne Vaux, meanwhile, joins Father Garnet in urging Robin simply to leave the country with his son instead of going through with this plot, but Robin, committed, will not listen. A mysterious letter (authorship still unknown) warns King James (Derek Riddell) and his close adviser Robert Cecil (Mark Gatiss, whom you might remember from "Game of Thrones" among other productions) about the plot. Guy Fawkes is the first to be caught, guarding the gunpowder in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords. The king's men eventually kill Robin and most of his cohorts in a firefight at Holbeche House, about twelve miles west-northwest of Birmingham. Robin's cousin Wintour is publicly gutted; Guy Fawkes, a radical to the end, jumps off the scaffold before he has a chance to be executed, thus dying on his own terms. Robin's son is taken by Anne Vaux to live elsewhere.

King James I, a Scot, is initially portrayed as being at least somewhat tolerant of the Catholics (the papists, to use the derisive term, i.e., those religiously loyal to the pope) in his country, but some of his advisers are less conciliatory and want to purge the kingdom of all Catholics. Once the Gunpowder Plot is revealed to the king, however, things change, and there is no more mercy for anyone, not even for Father Garnet, who had pleaded with Robin for peace. Father Garnet is executed as well for preaching his faith, thus leading to the incitement of English Catholics. Some of the rebels see Garnet as a coward—always hiding, never fighting, while people were being hounded and imprisoned and executed around him. Others, like Anne Vaux, see Garnet as an inspiration who would do no one any good were he to die. In the end, though, Father Garnet finds the strength to stop hiding and accept his fate. At one moment in the series's final episode, he tells Anne that she is his inspiration to be brave.

As befits a series about a secret plot, much of the action takes place in shadow, whether in town at night or on dark roads or in obscure fields. Being such a short series, it didn't have much time for joy or humor, and if you, as a watcher, already know a bit about the history of the Gunpowder Plot, you already know from the beginning that things are not going to come to a happy end for the rebellious Catholics. I recall my Catholic great aunt once giving me, a Protestant, a book by Leo Knowles called The Prey of the Priest-catchers, which described in lurid detail the methods of execution used in Europe by the vicious Protestants of the time, ranging from disembowelment to pressing (the aforementioned death by crushing, or peine forte et dure, "strong and hard punishment").

So for me, watching this series play out felt like a long wait for an execution: depressing and hopeless since I at least vaguely knew what was coming. Before I started the series, I was aware the Gunpowder Plot was a Catholic plot that failed, and from having read the graphic novel V for Vendetta, which features a Guy Fawkes mask hiding a mysterious and vengeful hero/antihero, I knew that November 5 would figure into the story somehow. The miniseries, while not entirely historically accurate, filled in many of the missing details.

I've had "Gunpowder" in my Amazon queue for years, and I hadn't gotten around to watching it until only just now. Is it as gripping as the early season of "Game of Thrones"? Gripping isn't the adjective I'd use for a story about the doomed side of a long-running conflict. Gloomy, yes. Sad, yes. Bleak, yes. While I've never been a Catholic myself, I've studied at Catholic institutions and generally feel comfortable inside Catholic churches and cathedrals. A rebellious side of me used to prompt me, on days I attended Mass, to quietly take communion with the rest of the laity; once I was old enough, though, I stopped with the surreptitious disrespect. My appreciation of Mother Church, as someone who used to worship as a Protestant, grew over the years, and while I have no intention of ever becoming Catholic, I respect the faith enough not to be one of those people constantly fixated on the Church's long history of abuses and malfeasance. I acknowledge those problems and don't shy away from them, but I know better than to paint the entire institution with a wide brush. Like any huge and complex institution, the Catholic Church has many dark and cobwebbed corners, but it also contains plenty of good eggs, well-intended souls who only want to help others and who may even privately chafe at some of their own institution's injustices.

One issue that comes up in the miniseries has resonated throughout history: that of where one's fundamental loyalty lies. From the perspective of King James I and his court, it's perfectly understandable to see Robin and his cohort as traitors since the pope was and is located outside of England. So what does it mean both to be Catholic—loyal to the pope—and to profess loyalty to one's own country at the same time? Centuries later, John F. Kennedy, himself a papist, was dogged by rumors that Rome would have an undue influence over him because of his seemingly divided loyalties. By the time we get to Joe Biden, however, we have a feeble Church that does nothing to Biden despite his support for abortion, which the Church sees as an act of child-murder and a mortal sin (mortal sin is not a Protestant concept). Through his presidency, Biden continued to receive the Eucharist. What has become of a Church that has lost all conviction? (Similar questions could be asked of mainline Protestant churches like PCUSA, of which I am ostensibly still a member.)

"Gunpowder" isn't a happy or uplifting series. It raises some issues about religion and loyalty that remain with us today, all while relating the story of a heroic-but-doomed effort. There is also one bit of trivia that is not so trivial to the series's star since it's probably what motivated him to produce the story to begin with: Kit Harington's real full name is Christopher Catesby Harington: he is, at least supposedly, the direct descendant of Robert Catesby, the man who had plotted to blow up Parliament in 1605 to restore Catholicism to England. Kit Harington owes his existence to Robert Catesby's second son, who survived the 1605 troubles. 

For those with short attention spans, this is an easily digestible miniseries about a dangerous time in England's past. I think the thing that impressed me most from the series was the emphasis on Catesby as the main formulator of the Gunpowder Plot, not Guy Fawkes, who later became so closely associated with the plot that the United Kingdom now celebrates November 5 as Guy Fawkes Night, with fireworks and bonfires. Fawkes was arrested on November 5; Catesby was gunned down on November 7. Ironically, it's the memory of Fawkes that lives on. Also: for those fearful that the series might have been "Netflixized," with diverse people walking the city streets, there's none of that. This vision of 1600s England is, from where I stand, truer to history than portrayals we see in other modern historical dramas. I'd say Watch and enjoy, but this miniseries isn't really meant to be enjoyed.