rowmorg

Lucy Lawless makes an excellent presenter in this documentary series about war-like women. I've seen the docs on Joan of Arc and on Grace O'Malley, a woman I regret I had never heard of. Lawless speaks clearly and looks great. The docs have irritating dramatisations that are not good enough to carry the stories, but they are adequate. I would have been quite happy with Lawless interviewing experts in order to tell the tales, but the producers feel the need to feed the crippled imaginations of their viewers. We barely glimpse the face of the woman playing Grace O'Malley, who lived a dramatic enough life, fighting as a pirate at sea and ruling her clan, and eventually visiting Queen Elizabeth the First at her palace in Greenwich and talking out a deal that took the brutal local governor off her shoulders, but not before she had lost at least two of her sons. Recommended.