I’ve been trying to watch the BBC series Gunpowder, which is the story of how Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby devised to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and stars Kit Harrington of Game of Thrones fame. Gunpowder has received many complaints from the general public about its ‘hideously violent’ scenes; at the start of episode one, a woman is squashed to death beneath a gigantic, heavy board and a young priest is hung, drawn and quartered. (If you don’t know what that is then you’d do well to remain blissfully unaware.)
Apparently (reported The Sun, so, you know, probably not true) some horrified viewers were left “throwing up” at the extreme violence. Why they didn’t just look away I don’t know – there was plenty of build-up to the main, gruesome events! I mean, the woman being squashed had a number of heavy weights hoisted on top of her before she took her last breath (unfortunately wasn’t as peaceful as that sounds) so it would have been easy to avert their eyes. The hanging, drawing and quartering of the priest happened even after this, so anyone feeling queasy would, if they were being sensible, turn off the telly rather than carry on watching and vomit all over their living room floor. The mind boggles. Anyway, I say that I’ve been trying to watch Gunpowder because I have actually only managed the first episode. We’re currently ploughing a series on Amazon called Bosch*, which is a b...