‘Tut’ is wrapped in cliches
In its first original scripted drama since the 2007 shot-in-Pittsburgh miniseries “The Kill Point,” Spike TV travels back in time to Egypt 1332 B.C. for the story of Tutankhamun, also known as King Tut.
The three-night six-hour miniseries airs at 9 p.m. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and offers occasionally beautiful production design, but mostly “Tut” serves soggy melodrama that embraces every boy-to-king cliche one might imagine.
Viewers meet Tut as a 9-year-old whose father has been poisoned. The boy is forced to watch as the suspected poisoner’s wife is dragged around the palace grounds until she’s dead and then Tut gets handed a knife and told to kill the poisoner’s son, who looks to be a few years younger than Tut.
Lil’ Tut shows some backbone, but then the miniseries fast-forwards to 10 years later and a 19-year-old Tut (Avan Jogia, “Wicked”) is perceived as a do-nothing pharaoh who’s mostly a lapdog to his top adviser, Grand Vizier Ay (Ben Kingsley, “Gandhi”), Egypt’s military leader Horemheb (Nonso Anozie, “Zoo”) and the high priest of Amun (Alexander Siddig, “Game of Thrones”).
Even his best friend, Ka (Peter Gadiot, “Matador”), taunts Tut during weapons training about how the people perceive their leader. Ka’s motives might be tainted: He’s in love with Tut’s sister, Ankhe (Sibylla Deen), who is also married to Tut. The miniseries does not make a big deal out of this incestuous relationship — it’s just mentioned in passing in night one — which is somewhat disappointing because it’s one of the more unusual plot points in “Tut.” And it’s one of the few based in fact.
Not a lot is known about Tut’s life, so writers Michael Vickerman (“Ring of Fire”) and Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg (“The Fosters”) invent a life that’s full of coincidence.
Tut sneaks out of the palace and meets a soldier, Lagus (Iddo Goldberg), whom Tut later leads into battle. During one of his adventures in the real world, Tut also meets a woman, Suhad (Kylie Bunbury), who ends up rescuing Tut after he’s been wounded during a skirmish. Viewers prone to smacking their foreheads over unbelievable plot turns might find themselves bruised after watching just the first installment of “Tut.”
(Episode synopses for subsequent nights reveal a wealth of crosses and double crosses to add to the soapy shenanigans.)
These predictable/preposterous plot elements co-mingle with some terrible dialogue, silly situations (characters enter a room full of dead bodies on hooks but don’t cover their noses in disgust until they see the bodies; wouldn’t the smell be enough for them?) and occasionally poor acting (a bar fly who attacks Suhad with the laughably bad line reading, “I’ll take whatever I want!”).
“Tut” may not be as silly as Steve Martin’s classic “Saturday Night Live” “King Tut” dance, but Spike’s miniseries occasionally comes inadvertently close.