Whilst not all, much of the sci-fi/genre TV fare that goes on TV at the Munky House is either discovered alongside the Mighty Rosie, or I have brought to the her attention, so when it goes the other way, it’s always something a bit special.
One such thing was Critical Role. Its a live stream of a game of Dungeons & Dragons, the world famous roleplaying game. The group are friends who work in acting and voice acting and their filmed games are quite fun. I watched one with a Christmas theme, that was over four hours long, but was such a laugh.
Now one of their more well regarded filmed campaigns was based on a group of characters known as Vox Machina and Amazon Prime recently adapted it to a 12 part animated adventure set in its fantasy world and the creators of Vox Machina were brought in to voice them and as soon as the MIGHTY Rosie heard of this, she insisted we watch it.
And so we did.
Here be spoilers
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The Legend of Vox Machina was released on 28 January 2022 starring the following:-
Vex’ahlia: Laura Bailey
Vax’ildan: Liam O’Brien
Percy De Rolo: Talieisin Jaffe
Pike: Ashley Johnson
Keyleth: Marisha Ray
Grog: Travis Willigham
Scanlan: Sam Riegel
Vox Machina are a group of adventurers containing many of the kinds of characters you find in a party of D&D players, a rogue, a fighter, a cleric, a mage and a bard. But these are relatively amoral ‘heroes’ who are in it for the sex, drugs and rock and roll of it all. When we first see them, they are involved in a bar fight. We very soon see that we are not in the presence of a regular set of protagonists. They are often in conflict with one another and have vastly different agendas. The series starts with a between-adventures bar fight before they are asked to save the nearby land of …….. from an unknown monster, which ends up being revealed to be a dragon. They then become the official heroes of the land they saved before being embroiled in the revenge filled agenda of Percy as he tries to free his land from the monsters that have taken his ancestral home.
In these stories we have love stories, redemption arcs and hero moments. We also have a lot of pretty graphic moments of violence and horror. Now all of that is good and if all that this show had to offer was drama and violence, it would still be worth seeing. The thing is, the biggest selling point of this show is it’s humour.
From the dry humour of Vex, Vax and Percy who are all quick asides and quips to the comedy gem that is Grog, the party’s tank, who moves from kind hearted goof to barbarian war machine in seconds, sometimes doing both at the same time. But as well as that, we get the party’s Bard, Scanlan. A blending of Marvel’s Pip the Troll, Farscape’s Rigel XVI and HIMYM’s Barney Stinson. Most of the show’s more risque moments and jokes. Everyone knows one of those people who are a bit too NSFW and when you take that to the Nth degree you get Scanlan and his magic purple hand spell.
The thing that struck me most about this show was that unlike a lot of fantasy series, there was a sort of layperson reaction to it all. The cast acting like the fucked up stuff was in fact fucked up. People reacted to the weirdness, like dragons, vampires and Vex having a familiar called Trinket who is a bear. This is a not safe for work show, plenty of sexual references, violence and horror wrapped up in a fantasy setting that makes this one of the most unique and interesting TV shows I have seen in the last two or three years. I knew it was something special when I was genuinely angry that the season had come to an end. Honestly I’m thinking of watching it again just writing about it. It’s on Amazon Prime at my end, which if you don’t have it, should have some kind of 30 day free trial option and this is very much worth giving a try.
A Munky on Merseyside 