I kinda liked Vikings. It's a watch one time thing for me and I have no desire to see it again.

Just finished season 2 Righteous Gemstones.

I swear, Danny McBride just tickles the shit out of me. The guy can do sarcasm better than anyone I can recall. He really got me hooked in "East bound and down."

Oh and apparently, John Goodman isn't deceased after all.

John Goodman took the show to another level.

Yeah, understanding the historical Alfred colored the way I looked at the relationship. Alfred is the one and only reason we even have written records from that period. He was insisting on recording everything with ink. We would know almost nothing about the Anglo-saxons of that time without him. He's actually the "hero" of the story, despite his shortcomings.

It actually isn't bad in that respect. And as a bonus, the guy that played Aethelred of Mercia in the Last Kingdom plays a prominent character in the story.

Danny McBride is top 5 for me. I love the guy. The series is excellent.

There are soooo many people who say that the show sucked after Season 1, they are crazy.

Aethelred was such a little weasel, Alfred should've burned out both of his eyes

So many names all sounded the same!

I just started rooting for/against faces after about 2 seasons.

Many ancient English names were strange no doubt, nothing like what we're used to in modern times... some of it almost sounds Gaelic, even though they were obviously very distinct people

You need to read a book my friend. I could tell you who every historical character was, where and when they ruled, and so on. :)

They're actually Anglo-Saxon names. Aethelred, Aethelflaed, Aldhelm, Alfred, Osbert, etc. All Old English. Descended from northwestern Europe - Denmark southwest to Belgium. The irony is that the Saxons' primary enemy at the time of the show was the Danes, who were from just a few miles north of the Saxons on the mainland. They just migrated at different times.

To make a long story short, there's basically 4 factions at the time of the show - Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia are Saxon. Of course, the Vikings are Dane and Norse. Then you have two related but distinct factions in the Celts. The Gaelic Celts inhabited Ireland and Scotland and then you had the Bretonic Celts in Wales, Cornwall, and Cumbria that were descended from the Britons.

For example, the king of Mercia in the second season before Aethelred and Aethelflaed were married (the old guy that died at the table) was Ceowulf. An actual historical character. We all know the famous tale of Beowulf. Ceowulf and Beowulf share a common etymology because both came from an area in what is probably modern day Schleswig Holstein which is the German state bordering Denmark.

Speaking of Anglo-Saxon names and language - only about a quarter of modern English comes from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) but the vast majority of our simple, everyday language is Old English.

I AM UHTRED SON OF UHTRED AND THAT'S ALL I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT, DAMMIT!!!

All the rest of 'em are redshirts...