Vengeance:The English.

"I believe in justice. I believe in vengeance. I believe in getting the bastard" - Vengeance, New Model Army

The English (BBC2/iPlayer, written and directed by Hugo Blick) is beautifully shot, brilliantly acted, and tells a tale of vengeance that should resonate throughout the ages. Yet, and maybe it's just me, I found it less than compelling. At times I was even a bit bored. I played Words With Friends on my phone far more than I should have done.

I'm not totally sure why that is. In a world of endless star filled skies, fields of gold, noble horses, rattlesnakes, prairie oysters, stagecoaches, paintings of buffalo slaughter, and manifest destiny we're treated to all manner of horror. Men are hanged, women are punched out cold, faces are blown clean off, and there's more than one suicide. Rabbits, pigs, cows, snakes, and horses all meet predictably grisly ends and humans often fare even worse.

All manner of inventive torture is devised for them. Among all the holsters, leather chaps, and bows and arrows (if you're a fan of toxophily, The English is for you), there is some good history stuff about Native Americans and how their lands, their rights, and their lives were taken from them by European settlers. But, despite this, The English always felt a little bit staged, a tad theatrical.

The actors perform as in the shade of some grand narrative that is never fully revealed and each of the six episodes makes for very slow going. As if mood prevails over motion. Some of the subplots and secondary characters are poorly sketched, the supposedly profound voice overs grate and add nothing, and the whole show rests on an air of smug superiority that is never really earned.

The main story concerns Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a Pawnee scout who is looking to claim his birthright and his meeting with Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt), an upper class English woman who wants to kill a man for the murder of her child. Set across Oklahoma, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas in 1890, the land seeps with the blood of the Indians it was stolen from.

Eli and Cornelia meet in unusual circumstances (some of the confected scenarios reminded me of BBC1's The Tourist from earlier this year - though they weren't as much fun) and head north together on a kind of road trip, horse trip, that will involve them coming into perilous contact with all manner of dubious characters. 

Black Eyed Mog (Nichola McAuliffe) is a particularly interesting case study. She kills Indians and hangs their scalps from her wall in her own quest for revenge but, staying true to The English's key theme, she is also the focus of someone else's revenge fantasty. Indian chief Kills On Water (William Belleau) is after her scalp and believes Eli Whipp may be the man to get it.

He's pretty handy with a knife - and a gun too. With no great pride, he informs Cornelia that's he's both "seen Hell" and "made Hell". Cornelia's a good archer, and she carries with her a bag overflowing with dollar bills, but she does have the stomach for the ultraviolence of the American frontier? Will her belief in magic, luck, and destiny be enough to save her?

She's pursued, vaguely, be Thomas Trafford (Tom Hughes), an unhappy land owner who refers to homesteaders as pigfuckers (elsewhere Native Americans are routinely dismissed as shitsniffers), and hangdog Sheriff Robert Marshall (Stephen Rea) who struggles to keep the peace in the small Wyoming settlement he's nominally in charge of.

As they journey on, Eli and Cornelia run into shoot outs, abandoned children, and a fairly decent list of quality character actors that don't hang around for very long. Toby Jones, as Sebold Cusk, is barely on screen for ten minutes, Ciaran Hinds (as racist rapist David M.Watts) lasts just one episode, and even Rafe Spall (who is brilliant as the deranged David Melmont, even if he did remind me of Tom Hardy's Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders) only appears in two of the six episodes.

His role was, at least, pivotal. Too many weren't. Sadder than that, though, was that, by the end, I didn't really care what happened to Eli or Cornelia. I didn't care if they got killed and I didn't care if they got their revenge. I just wanted it to finish so I could switch over and watch Question Time. A disappointment - but at least a visually impressive one.