Then there is Milady de Winter. Maimie McCoy steals the show by refusing to be a victim. This Milady is not a femme fatale seduced into wickedness; she is a survivor who weaponized her trauma. Her chemistry with Burke is electric because it feels real—two people who loved each other and now hate each other with equal, exhausting passion.
The season is not flawless. The episodic “case of the week” structure can feel clunky (Episode 5, “The Homecoming,” drags). The fight choreography, while brutal and balletic, occasionally relies too heavily on the “Corkscrew Parry” (a move where a hero spins to block three opponents at once—thrilling the first time, a gimmick the sixth). Furthermore, the show’s insistence on modern social commentary (slavery, religious persecution, PTSD) is noble but sometimes anachronistic; characters speak like 21st-century therapists rather than 17th-century soldiers.
From the opening shot—a muddy, brutal ambush in a snow-dusted forest—the show announces its intentions. This is not the chandelier-swinging, feather-capped Paris of your imagination. This is a dangerous, cynical city where Cardinal Richelieu (a magnificent, reptilian Peter Capaldi) doesn’t just plot against the Queen; he does so with the quiet boredom of a man who has already won. The production design is lush but lived-in: mud clings to boots, taverns are genuinely dark, and the steel of a sword looks heavy.
Season One of The Musketeers doesn’t just find that heart; it wears it on its embroidered sleeve.
Final Grade: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Despite its flaws, Season One of The Musketeers achieves something rare. It reminds us that the story is not about the sword fights—it’s about the men holding the swords. It understands that loyalty is not a slogan but a daily choice to forgive your brothers for being human.
But the true innovation of Season One is its structure. The show wisely jettisons the novel’s origin story. Our four heroes—Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and the rookie d’Artagnan—are already a unit. We meet them as a scarred, bickering family. This allows the season to do something remarkable: it makes them vulnerable not just to swords, but to themselves.
No season of The Musketeers works without a great Richelieu, and Capaldi is sublime. He never twirls a mustache. Instead, he leans into the banality of political evil. His genius move is liking the Musketeers. In Episode 4, “The Good Soldier,” he tells them he respects their honor—right before trying to destroy them. Capaldi’s Richelieu believes he is the only adult in a room full of children, and that terrifying self-righteousness elevates every scene.
In the crowded graveyard of swashbuckling adaptations, the BBC’s 2014 series The Musketeers could have easily been a handsome corpse. The source material—Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers —has been blunted by parody ( The Mickey Mouse Club ), exhausted by excess (the 2011 3D film), and ossified by reverence (countless stuffy TV movies). To draw fresh blood in 2014, a new adaptation needed more than just witty banter and clanging rapiers. It needed a heart.
When the four stand together on the battlements at the end of Episode 10, battered, betrayed, but unbowed, they aren’t just heroes. They are a family. And in an age of gritty anti-heroes and grimdark fantasy, watching four men try so hard to be good—and frequently fail—is the most thrilling adventure of all.