The reactions against the series – both good and bad, expected by the team
“We expect reactions to what we are going to tell, and they will probably be extreme. What we don’t expect is that someone will remain indifferent”, says Teodora Markova, head scriptwriter of “The War of the Letters”, a week before its premiere.
And the reactions are not long in coming: “The film is a shame for Bulgarian cinema! A complete sham in every aspect”, “Another joke with Bulgarian history”, “Poor dubbing, you are recreating 2022, the center of Vidin”. The negative comments on social networks after the first episode, broadcast on January 15 in prime time on BNT1, are still in this direction.
The sharp reaction comes shortly after the public debacle of the film “Botev” directed by Maxim Genchev, shown by BNT on January 2.
The new production tells about the youngest son of Tsar Simeon – Bayan (played by Daniel Varbanov), who is looking for the secret of the lost ancient Bulgarian letters. However, the dialogues sounded modern, dissatisfied viewers on social networks. Some even discovered
similarities with the hit series “Game of Thrones”
“Is Prince Bayan (Boyan Maga) like Robb Stark supposed to be? It is true that the medieval chroniclers wrote about him that he could turn into a wolf, but… And Queen Mariam – the wife of King Simeon (whose name actually has not reached us), is she supposed to resemble Cersei?… Intimacy her with her brother – Kavhan Sursuvul, is “not at all” like Cersei and Jaime Lannister”, they wrote on Facebook.
Nidal Alghafari, who is also the director, is also not satisfied: “The packaging – the teaser – was very, very good for him… I was surprised by several very striking inaccuracies despite the consultation of prominent historians. “Everything will blow up” is a metaphorical expression that was not known in this historical period. “My program” – said by one of the characters, is also strange for the period since then.
“It would be nice if in future fewer modern words and expressions were heard, but it is clear that if the characters speak as they are supposed to have done in the tenth century,
almost no one will understand”
however, it is answered by another post.
“Bulgarian viewers are not used to watching historical adaptations on screen – believes the writer Lyudmila Filipova, whose novel of the same name was used as the script for the series. – Since the word exists, there has been storytelling with facts, but also artistic adaptation of strong historical images, eras and events. It is the artistic adaptations that breathe the soul and make the viewer, the listener and the reader live, laugh and cry with the character in question. Then you look at this historical image and era in a different way.”
The viewers of the remaining 11 episodes will show how good the series is, but it is a fact that BNT has not been talked about so much for a long time.
