My recent excitement at Kings, a modern, alternate-reality dramatization of chunks of the Old Testament, became disappointment when confronted with the reality of watching it. My main problem with it is how they’ve destroyed the character of David. He’s wet, naive, passive, and utterly devoid of ambition — pretty much the exact opposite of the biblical David. One of the most ruthless, scheming and driven OT personalities becomes a corn-fed Midwestern ingenue. All the sharp edges — all that is attractive or morally dubious — is stripped off him, and he — like all the other characters — is reduced to a standard American archetype. Hard to keep paying attention beyond that point.
In retrospect, I can’t quite understand my anticipatory excitement. Bible dramatizations are hardly new and, like anything else, have no guarantee of turning out well. That’s even without the problem of other people’s interpretations of stories with which you already have some emotional relationship.