Heartfelt Reign is period-piece teen soap
If not for The Hunger Games, Reign might never have existed. The youth-oriented costume drama isn’t so much a young, modernized update on Charles Jarrott’s 1971 epic Mary, Queen of Scots as it is an extended music video, with young women in their late teens and early 20s behaving heroically, while all around them their elders behave like scum.
In its four weeks on the air so far, Reign has defied expectations. It hails from The CW, the same network that gave the TV world such works of art as Hart of Dixie and The Tomorrow People, and airs in Canada on CTV Two.
Reign, filmed in Toronto with rural Ontario filling in for 17th-century Scotland — the pilot was filmed in Ireland — has drawn enough young women, its target demo, to make it a credible pairing with The Vampire Diaries on parent network The CW. (CTV Two has paired Reign with The X Factor.)
Reign is really good for what it is — idealistic, romantic, sweet-natured in parts and oddly engaging.
Hard Core Logo filmmaker Bruce McDonald directed this week’s episode, A Chill in the Air, in which a former flame of Francis’s (guest star Yael Grobglas) arrives unexpectedly at the castle, bringing “the dangers of the woods” with her, compelling Mary to seek comfort in the arms of her confidante Sebastian, a.k.a. Bash ( Torrance Coombs), Francis’s half-brother.
Reign is not, as Mary’s suitor Dauphin Francis (Toby Regbo) tells the young Mary (Aussie ingenue Adelaide Kane), “beautiful and clever and unpredictable.” It’s surprisingly heartfelt, though, and emotionally ambitious. Heart and emotion go a long way when turning a period piece into a teen soap.
Kane is she’s convincing. Age-appropriate, too. In a pop culture where 20-somethings and even 30-somethings are often cast as high-school students, Regbo is 22 and Kane is 23. They are young actors playing young royals in a costume drama aimed squarely at a young audience.
The songs are catchy, too. Reign’s detractors may have groused about the juxtaposition of Paul Otten’s Girl You’re Alright and 17th-century Scotland, but that’s part of Reign’s youthful charm. (9 p.m., WGN, WPIX, CTV Two)
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Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is teetering on the brink of cancellation, so you’d better see it while you can if you’re curious. In this week’s hour, Will Scarlet (Michael Socha) and Anastasia (Emma Rigby) jump back in time through the looking glass, against her mother’s wishes, only to learn that Wonderland isn’t quite what they expected. (8 p.m., ABC, City)
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It may be a sign of the popcultural times that something is no longer cool the moment that it appears on Glee. In an outing titled The End of Twerk, the glee club learns and then unlearns the dance fad of the hour. Ioan Gruffudd, of Horatio Hornblower fame, guest stars. (9 p.m., Fox, Global)
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On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) demands that Leonard (Johnny Galecki) atone for a past sin by making him walk a mile in his shoes — a fate worse than death — in an episode called The Itchy Brain Simulation. (8 p.m., CBS, CTV)