John Ford paid tribute to the Western with masterpieces like Desert Centaurs. The Coen brothers have updated it with the new version of Henry Hathaway’s True Grit. Now he arrives in the field of television series. Written and directed by Hugo Blick, The English is undoubtedly an excellent twist on the genre, with a cast that highlights an exceptional Emily Blunt, superbly packaged by Chaske Spencer, Tom Hughes and Stephen Rea, among others.
A tale set in 1890 in which a wealthy British lady’s desire for revenge in her search for who is to blame for her son’s death is the dignity of a Pawnee researcher who served in the Union Army and yearns to take back the country which the whites have taken from their own, and an inevitable and subtle love story between the protagonists, immersed, yes, in a violent and cruel atmosphere of how the years after the American Indian genocide and greed should be out there in the promised land.
Emily Blunt, star of The English. Photographer: Diego Lopez Calvin
The atypical pair of leads endure numerous obstacles on their long pilgrimage in search of their goals, a path that will see them face the worst of villains on which racism and misogyny complement their cruelty, yet the series flows with the coherence of a good script. Anecdotally, it’s worth noting that the six episodes of the BBC production showing HBO Max in Spain set the action on the plains of Kansas and Wyoming. The magic on screen reached the authenticity of the landscapes, although they were shot in Castile and on a farm in Ávila.
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