What a view | In ‘Rise of Empires: Ottoman’ on Netflix, education meets entertainment
- The six-part series unites bloody drama with documentary interludes to illuminating effect
- Plus, a more lighthearted look at the past in Miracle Workers: Dark Ages, starring Steve Buscemi
It remains to be seen whether Netflix’s hefty docudrama undertaking, Rise of Empires, runs for sufficient seasons to embrace the story of 21st century imperial China. But for anyone hankering after the thrills and bloody gut-spills of yesterday’s superpowers, Rise of Empires: Ottoman, is the place to look.
Back when “Ottoman” meant more than just a couch, today’s Turkey was the motherland of an empire that reached from the doorstep of Vienna down to big chunks of the Arabian Peninsula. That expansionism was founded on some grisly battlefield meat cleaving, a sanitised but still ferocious version of which peppers plenty of scenes here.
Perched astride the Bosphorus, one foot in Europe, the other in Asia, Roman Empire capital Constantinople (now Istanbul, of course) achieved its fabled-city fame as the nexus of Christianity and the world’s greatest shopping centre, so the Muslims at the gates understandably had their own plans for it.
The 1453 siege of the city followed; and although it certainly wasn’t the first time an army had tried to demolish Constantinople’s mighty walls, this time proved historically momentous – and the repercussions are still rumbling today.
So it’s Mehmed II versus Constantine XI for a place on the all-time greatest rulers’ honours board, with commentary by aristocratic actor Charles Dance at his most sonorous. The illuminating documentary interludes are provided by an international team of scholars, whose insights, sensibly edited for brevity, perfectly tee up the cinematic action. This is one game of thrones with planet-rattling consequences.