‘The Bastard Executioner’s’ Two-Hour Premiere In September, Cast And Plot Details Revealed

The Bastard Executioner is one show we have all been desperately waiting for.

All Kurt Sutter fans who have had a taste of his style in Sons of Anarchy could not hold their excitement when his next show, The Bastard Executioner. In fact, the project was announced even before the sixth season of Sons of Anarchy wrapped up in December 2013. It has been over one and a half years since that first announcement, and now the medieval epic drama is almost ready for its premiere in just about a month’s time on September 15.

According to Deadline, the pilot episode of The Bastard Executioner will be a two-hour episode and will debut at 10 p.m. The blood-soaked epic tells the tale of Wilkin Brattle (played by Australian actor Lee Jones), a 14th-century warrior in King Edward I’s army, whose life is forever changed when a divine messenger asks him to lay down his weapons and lead the life of a journeyman executioner.

Stephen Moyer, the True Blood actor who almost teamed up with Sutter on Sons of Anarchy, and Sutter’s wife, Katey Sagal, who was hailed for her role as Gemma Teller Morrow in Sons, also feature in The Bastard Executioner. But perhaps the most exciting news is that English pop star Ed Sheeran has joined the cast as Sir Cormac, an ambitious and deadly protégé of a high-ranking church elder, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The Bastard Executioner also pairs Sutter and his long-time confidante, Paris Barclay — the man responsible for perfectly directing the high-adrenaline sequences of Sons of Anarchy — together one more time. As Monsters & Critics noted, at a recent promotional event in Beverly Hills, Barclay talked about the effort that had gone into creating the historical/period aspect of The Bastard Executioner.

“Most of the castles you see in the show are built. Giles Masters, who is our production designer, is truly a master. And most of what you see, including that 50 foot castle that is Castle Ventris, exists on our back-lot. Most of the interiors you see we built on stages. We have four different stages in Wales that we do the show in. I was really kind of blown away by what we got for value and for craft in the UK.”

Castle's almost done. Cue The Executioner! #TBX pic.twitter.com/tRkvK59P39

— Paris Barclay (@Harparbar) April 4, 2015

Finally, during a chat with Monsters & Critics, Kurt Sutter explained what drew him from Sons of Anarchy into The Bastard Executioner.

“My mandate, as it was on Sons, is that the violence — as absurd as it could be sometimes on Sons — always came from an organic place. For every violent act, there were ramifications. That’s my same mandate here… Yes, it’s a medieval setting, and the laws in terms of punishment were brutal and heinous. That’s a reality of the world. And there are ways to portray that violence that don’t make it openly gratuitous. Anything that happens — be it a battle sequence, or an execution, or a torture scene — comes out of story. And it always has some ramification.”

Yes, we hope those ramifications do not meet a dead end for many, many years to come. May The Bastard Executioner not be executed any time soon!

[Photo: Frederick M. Brown, Ian Gavan / Getty Images]