The Dovekeepers

The Dovekeepers is beautifully written and acted, without a whiff of the hokey melodrama so unfortunately common in period pieces, especially those with biblical themes.

If Biblical-style fantasy is your bag, then its for you, but audiences who have feminist leanings will find the number of times the women are--as with too many Bible tales--called whores and prostitutes extremely grating.

The Dovekeepers is well-produced television, polishing a long-ago tragedy into a smooth story. That may or may not be the same thing as accurate history.

Flavius Josephus’ position in The Dovekeepers would perhaps be even more egregious if any of the other characters were fully drawn, but they aren’t.

We’ve spent so much time on mundane love affairs, the nature of the resistance remains an enigma. The Dovekeepers spins history until everyone seems a bit dizzy.

There’s a well-scrubbed tepidness to Shirah (Cote de Pablo), and to this whole mini-series, that Ziva never would have tolerated.

This Masada is a hotbed of passion, with plenty of lovemaking amid the threat of war, and you may wonder why Sam Neill doesn't urge them to can the soap opera and cut to the chase. [23 Mar - 5 Apr 2015, p.15]

A missed opportunity to deliver a compelling modern interpretation of the famous mass suicide.

[The Dovekeepers] is filled to the brim with chintzy special effects and subpar acting, plus the kind of Harlequin novel eroticism that went out of fashion long before Fabio stopped shilling for “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.”

[The story comes] complete with stilted dialogue and focus more on their complicated, intertwined personal lives than on the legendary siege and its bloody aftermath.

While there are plenty of concurrent threads--including Kathryn Prescott as Shirah’s warrior daughter, Aziza; and Sam Hazeldine as Flavius Silva, the ruthless leader of the invading Romans--those come across less as fully realized plots than half-baked time-wasters before the main event, when the Romans finally figure out a strategy to breach the seemingly impregnable fortress. Those closing moments capture some of the romance that has surrounded the story of Masada, but having poorly established the characters even with the occasional Harlequin Romance-style grappling between Shirah and Eleazar.