King & Conqueror review: James Norton stars in a grimy panto which fails to make compelling drama out of its historical liberties

Which should make the BBC's new epic drama King & Conqueror an appealing watch, being both primary school history lesson familiar and with enough scope to tell us something we don't know.

It gets off to a rocky start with our two protagonists, Harold (James Norton) and William (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) stumbling about the battlefield shouting at each other.

“William!” bellows Harold.

“Harold!” yells William, channelling his inner Steptoe.

We're then plunged back into the historically nebulous period of 'Years Earlier', to a time when the English lords are busy choosing a new king and the French countryside is littered with arrow-pricked corpses.

The middle-aged William sports a neat little moustache and soul patch beard, telling us he knew the recently-appointed monarch Edward the Confessor when they were “just children”.

Historical alarm bells may start a-clanging at this point, given that by most accounts William was 25 years younger than Edward.

There are other scenes which better-read people than I would take exception too, such as William travelling to Edward's coronation with his mate Fitz and a couple of knights, or William's queen Matilda (Clemence Poesy) personally heading the hunt for a traitor and indulging in a bit of light torture.

Or various battles being taken out of date, or Harold and his fractious family being exiled almost a decade too early.

None of this would matter to the lay viewer, however, if the drama itself was a an edge-of-the-seat thriller.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

Much of the first two episodes are spent barrelling back-and-forth between France and England, with muttered asides or bellowed arguments about loyalty, fealty and duty. There's little in the way of action, and many scenes take place in the half-light of candles in hay-strewn great halls.

Everyone is grimy, with Norton's Harold in particular needing a wipe down with spit and a paper hankie, and there are the usual medieval tropes of roister-doistering, backside-slapping and much gulping from deer horn flagons.

Meanwhile, William skulks about doing little and saying less, Matilda apparently the power both behind and in front of his throne.

In fact, the women are the driving forces behind much of the first two episodes, the men being more interested in arguing about bending knees than doing anything.

Matilda – despite being from Flanders – comes across as being made in Scotland from girders, lopping off hands and giving birth in hayfields.

Harold's common-law wife Edith (Emily Beecham) is a skilled eavesdropper who passes on titbits of information to the Godwins – Harold's family – while steeling Harold for the fights ahead.

But amid all the dark, and the furrowed brows and earnestness of the whole thing, Juliet Stevenson stands out as Edward the Confessor's mum, Emma of Normandy.

While Eddie Marsan plays Edward as if someone's slipped a Mickey Finn in his morning cup of mead, Stevenson's Emma is a monstrous, Machiavellian figure – part Margaret Thatcher, part Timothy's mum from 80s sitcom Sorry.

She seems to have realised this is all just a gritty panto and gives it full-on hissable villain, casting withering looks and hurling out vicious insults at will.

“Calm down little boy, this no time for one of your tantrums,” she tells Harold's arrogant, entitled brother Sweyn. “England's power is one again where it should be, in our hands!”

And aside from Emma's put-downs, the dialogue is packed with exposition and rarely sparkles.

Comparisons are invidious, but whereas Viking saga The Last Kingdom took a tale with a sprinkling of historical fact and added characters to root for, gory action and dialogue with wit, earthiness and a certain lyricism – “Destiny is all!” – King & Conqueror takes liberties with the history but fails to make the most of it, leaving the drama as dead as those corpses in France.