The Last Kingdom

Uhtred tells his own story in the books, looking back as an old man. That voice is the chief thing the series cannot give you. His wry and often brutal narration, full of grudges and hindsight, turns battles and oaths into a memoir. He judges kings, priests and himself with the same sharp eye, and knows how things turned out even as he describes them going wrong. The novels also give the time the show skips. Uhtred's boyhood among the Danes takes up more than half of the first book. That is where his split loyalties are formed, and knowing it makes his later choices land harder. Across thirteen books you watch him grow old, rougher and less heroic than the screen version, until he is in his seventies at Brunanburh. For viewers who finished the show and the film, the books offer the whole arc in one steady voice, with the texture a television schedule has to leave out.

Thirteen novels are compressed into five seasons and a film, Seven Kings Must Die, which takes the last three books. Each season covers at least two novels. No available source compares the series finale with the books' ending, so as far as is known the adaptation is mostly faithful there. The first season is also mostly faithful: it follows The Last Kingdom and The Pale Horseman closely and closes, as the second novel does, on the Saxon victory at Ethandun. From Season 2, which adapts Lords of the North and Sword Song, the show reportedly moves further from the page. The largest change of form is the loss of Uhtred's first-person narration. The show tells the story from outside. It also rushes his Danish childhood, which fills more than half of the first novel, so that he is an adult by the end of episode one. Fan write-ups suggest that other material is thinned too, such as Uhtred's service on Alfred's coastal ships. Brida's arrival reportedly changes as well. In the book she is found in East Anglia and drawn with a spirit and pull toward the Danes. On screen she is simply another enslaved Northumbrian child. The screen Uhtred is reportedly cleaner and softer than Cornwell's taller, blond and rougher hero. He also ages far less. The books take him into his seventies by Brunanburh, while the show keeps him fit to fight and avoids recasting him. He is said to get along better with his eldest son than in the novels. Some characters who survive in the books reportedly die on screen, which raises the drama. These last points come from a small set of sources, several of them fan blogs, so treat them as likely rather than certain.