Catesby on the BBC

So I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up a well known television and radio listings magazine this week and saw that on the 21st of this month the BBC are going to broadcast a new drama named Gunpowder, 

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05j1bc9

It will centre around a certain gentleman, one Robert Catesby who I wrote about a short time ago in a short piece about November 5th and my experience of it many moons ago, methinks it will be quite interesting to see how the story of the  plot and its protagonists are portrayed,

I'm hopeful as anything the BBC produces of this genre is usually pretty good, and I'm hoping they did some of the filming in and around the Catesby family home where a lot of the plotting was done. The actor who will play Catesby is a real life descendant of the man himself on his Mothers side of the family.

I was thinking about this and thought what a good idea a follow up series which told the story of how things may have turned out had the plot succeeded might be, after all not too long back we had the story of a UK ruled by a victorious Germany, 

That aside its good to see our history being given an airing, and sadly I suppose it shows that for all our assumed sophistication the human race will always be at war with itself, maybe one day we we learn to live without religion, would that be a positive thing ? you tell me.
 

25/10/1017

So an update now that the first episode has been shown.

You know when you hear someone's voice on the telephone but you have never met them, without realising it you build an image in your mind of what you think they will look like.

I did a similar thing leading up to the first episode of Gunpowder, I thought "Ah the story of those bad men who plotted against the good me but were caught and rightly punished".

This is a sad admission on my part as it shows I was still seeing and thinking about the story through the prism of what I had been taught, or maybe not taught at school. If you read my blog on the mummified human heart and ghosts I mentioned always keeping an open mind. Obviously I'm not always following my own advice and I need to think about that in the future.

​What did I think after the first episode, well it opened my eyes to the cruelty we as humans can inflict on each other for no real reason, I knew that Catholics had suffered persecution, 
but had never thought what the realities of that might be like.

The scene where the lady of the house was slowly crushed to death was truly horrific, and worse was to come with the dismemberment of the young man.

I am not religious and never have been, and for me the lunacy of one set of people inflicting such barbarity on fellow human beings on the basis that the method of worship they practice differs although they believe in the same God suggests to me we could do without formal religion.

You can see how one mans terrorist can easily become another mans freedom fighter, anyway I look forward to episode two and the comments that will appear on Twitter, I love reading other peoples thoughts and opinions.