Troy: Fall of a City trailer — Could Netflix epic be a potential Game of Thrones challenger?

Ever since HBO made the bank with Game of Thrones, a thousand pretenders have vied for the swords and sandals crown: Spartacus, The Bastard Executioner, Vikings, Black Sails, The Tudors, The Last Kingdom… the list is endless. So far, many have tried but none have succeeded to take the Iron Throne. [caption id=“attachment_4416399” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] A still from Troy: Fall of a City. Netflix[/caption] As the HBO behemoth nears the end of its glorious run, BBC1 and Netflix have joined hands to bring forth a new contender: Troy: Fall of a City. And by the looks of it, viewers might have a worthy claimant to the throne on our hands. Even those who have a passing familiarity with history know the story of Helen of Troy, the woman who launched a thousand ships, and brought 100,000 warriors to battle against 75,000 Trojans, according to the Greek writer Homer. It was, with all respect to World War I, the first real Great War. The first voice over in the new Netflix trailer hints at a thorough exploration of the Troy fable: Of Paris, the infant prince whose birth heralded the destruction of the world’s most powerful city. The infant who was abandoned, exiled and left for dead, only to return to claim his place. Of the forbidden love between that young prince and Helen of Sparta, the wife of a powerful Greek warlord Menelaus. “You say you have no choice in the matter,” Paris tells his beloved, the soon-to-be famed Helen of Troy. “You have a choice now. Come with me.” The trailer makes it clear that the lovebirds will be front and centre of the tale, along with Menelaus, the cuckolded husband of Helen who seeks help from his brother Agamemnon, the man who would be king of all the Greeks. “I am not a possession,” Helen states, rather emphatically laying claim to agency in the Bronze Age, an era where women were very much the possession of their fathers and husbands (a move sure to play well with audiences of the 21st century and incurable romantics). “I choose to be here.” The rest of the trailer is very much devoted to gorgeous landscape shots that show every penny Netflix put into this reported $100 million dollar series, set pieces of battles that look straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster, culminating with an enraged Achilles hectoring prince Hector of Troy to face him in single combat and meet his certain death. We all know how this story ends. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts et al. But I still cannot wait. Troy: Fall of a city premieres on 6 April on Netflix.