Viewers Divided On The Amount Of Gore In ​Kit Harington's New Show 'Gunpowder'

Kit Harington is one of the biggest draws in television. He catapulted himself to fame on the back of his portrayal of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones and pretty much everything that he has appeared in since has gone onto be a massive hit - so it shouldn't be surprising that his latest effort, Gunpowder, is wowing audiences on the BBC.

Credit: BBC/Gunpowder

The formula is pretty simple: throw in one hunky leading man with a flair for dirt, gore and intrigue and then surround him with more intrigue, more violence and (something that was missing from Game of Thrones) an actual slice of historical realism and accuracy.

That's Gunpowder, a show based on the life of Robert Catesby, a recusant Catholic in 1603, just about the time of the Gunpowder Plot.

The show aired for the first time last night and set audiences ablaze from the very off, with a depiction of real, actual violence that shocked many.

Forget your dragons and freezing walls, Gunpowder featured a Catholic getting hung, drawn and quartered in gruesome detail within the first ten minutes, and then went south from there.

There were decapitations and amputations, bones getting crushed and plenty more besides.

Some viewers were quick to point out that the standards of violence in British public life have somewhat lowered since the 1603 shown in the programme.

"I wonder how many BBC viewers will complain about the graphic scenes in #Gunpowder even though this stuff actually happened regularly?" wrote one use on Twitter, while another agreed, posting: "To those who are horrified at the 'gore' please pick up a history book. Britain was built on blood, rape and plundering #Gunpowder."

True, and as any child of a Catholic school knows, the late Tudor and early Stuart period was really not a brilliant time to have an allegiance to Rome.

The graphicness of the violence was not to everyone's liking, though.

Interestingly, Kit Harington has a link to the character that he plays in Gunpowder.

Harington is known to be of somewhat blue-blooded stock - he has an official coat of arms and has direct ancestry to King Charles II - but many were surprised to learn that he is a descendant of Robert Catesby, the organiser of the Gunpowder Plot whom he plays in the show.

Topics: TV and Film, Kit Harington, UK Entertainment, Game of Thrones

Mark McGowan

Mark is a journalist at LADbible, who joined in 2015 after a year as a freelance writer. In the past he blogged for independent football fan channel Redmen TV, after graduating from Staffordshire University with degrees in journalism and English literature. He has worked on campaigns such as UOKM8? and IIOC.