The English Review: A Sloppy Midsection Keeps This Bloody Western From Greatness

Prime Video’s new Western The English often feels like two very different shows fighting under a blanket and one—the compelling and emotional two-hander between stars Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer—is much different (and much better) than the other. 

To be fair, the show takes some big swings that deserve to be applauded and, in the end, it mostly manages to corral its fractured, often convoluted subplots into something vaguely resembling coherence, but it’s hard not to wonder how truly great The English might have been had it kept things more simple and straightforward.

The story follows wealthy British aristocrat Cornelia Locke (Blunt) who arrives in America with a bag of cash and a clear-minded mission: To get revenge for the death of her son. Through a series of violent events at a remote Kansas outpost, she meets Eli Whipp (Spencer), a Pawnee ex-cavalry scout with conflicting feelings about his position in this new America. 

Convinced their meeting was a kind of magic, she asks him to accompany her north, toward the Wyoming town where she believes the man responsible for her son’s death lives.

He’s headed vaguely in that direction anyway, toward the Nebraska territory, where he hopes to be able to use the Homestead Act and his service in the U.S. Army to wrench back a few acres of the land that’s been systematically stolen from his people. 

Blunt’s Cordelia turns out to be a surprising badass (not to mention a sick shot with a bow and arrow) but even that’s not enough to truly protect her in a world in which men are allowed to behave with violent impunity toward her As for Spencer’s Eli, he’s trapped in a strange liminal space, viewed as a traitor by his people for joining the Army, and as a savage by many of those he once served with. 

The English is at its best when it’s following the journey of these two lost souls, who form an offbeat, thoroughly intriguing connection with one another, and whose soft emotional bond stands in stark contrast to the brutal world they find themselves in.

Blunt and Spencer have fantastic chemistry with one another and their characters share a sort of quiet longing for something they can call home. As they bond over stars and lost dreams, it’s easy to imagine a version of this show that’s solely focused on this pair and their story, and the gentle yearning that springs up between them.

There are many reasons why their potential romance is relegated to lingering glances and an almost pathological desire to rescue each other from life-threatening situations, but the obvious longing between the two will delight anyone who swoons over fingers deliberately brushing or a lingering grasping of hands. 

Unfortunately, every time The English shifts its focus from Cornelia and Eli, the story stumbles, slowing down unbearably in places and frequently delving into confusing flashbacks or pointless subplots full of little more than greed and murder.

From a deeply boring murder mystery in the town of Hoxem (yes, the same place Cornelia and Eli are headed), to the exposition-heavy interludes involving British rancher Thomas Trafford (Tom Hughes), missing union soldiers, and disputes over the ownership of free grazing cattle, there are a lot of subplots that feel completely extraneous to the parts of the series that matter. (Or at least the parts we’re primarily interested in watching.)

An episode in the middle of the season essentially grinds all forward narrative momentum to a halt. And although it focuses on the ways an admittedly crucial piece of Eli’s backstory intersects with a tragic bit of Cornelia’s, there are too many moments where those connections are recounted through characters that are not either of them.

That makes it incredibly hard to care about anything we’re watching. 

The Western landscapes are sweeping and beautiful, stark in a way that is painfully striking in places. There’s plenty of violence, from scalpings and stabbings to random dead animal carcasses, and no shortage of blood. 

The English awkwardly tries to make some sweeping pronouncements about the violence at the heart of the American experiment and what it means to found a country that’s based in no small part on oppression and hatred of the “other” as much as it is the ideals of freedom and wide open spaces. These often come off in a fairly hamfisted manner, 

Thankfully, The English boasts a remarkably talented supporting cast to fill out its assorted roster of random and over-the-top grifters, sadists, religious fanatics, psychopaths, thieves, racists, and killers. So, at least there are some top-notch performances to go along with the dozen or so deeply superfluous characters.

From Cirian Hinds’ early turn as a sort of Old West Walmart greeter who is actually a casual rapist to Rafe Spall’s almost cartoonishly violent and disease-ridden Big Bad, there are an array of familiar faces having a blast chewing all the scenery they can find.

(Personal favorite: Nichola McAuliffe as a woman named Black Eyed Mog, an instantly iconic pseudo-villain whose story I actually wouldn’t mind knowing more about.)

But it’s Blunt and Spencer who carry this show and who ultimately make it worth watching. More importantly, they’re the reason you should muddle through the parts that may make you want to give up entirely–because the story’s bittersweet end is strangely beautiful, and strangely perfect, in its way.

What did you think of The English? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The English is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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