The Many Failings of Barbarossa
What made such a hotly anticipated big budget historical, a crumbling mess?
The summer of 2021 was fizzing with excitement for certain people around the globe. These people had spent the better part of the last decade (2014-2019) obsessing over Dirilis Ertugrul every Wednesday evening on TRT. Others, like me, shrinked those years into weeks by binging the entirety of its four seasons (448 episodes) on netflix.
Engin Altan was coming back on the screen that had eternized him as the face of new Turkish soft power. Again in a historical, yet again on TRT. When Barbarossa premiered, it had a nervous energy around it, as is always the case with projects so hyped, so anticipated. It was almost like a foreboding.
With the perspective of hindsight (now that Barbarosaa has, for better or for worse, finished its first season), one can safely say that the curse of the sophomore slump (for Altan) was strong with the Barbarossa.
Let's delve into the rocky road that was season one of Barbarossa to see where it all went downhill, and if there is a possibility of a (non-Ertugrul) resurrection.
The Timeline
In line with other action-adventure-historical series that had sprung up after the mega success of Dirilis Ertugrul, Barbarossa - Sword of the Mediterranean- was 'based on true events' fictional story of four brothers who dominated the Mediterranean for much of the 16th century, ending with one of them -Khizr- becoming the Grand Admiral of Ottoman navy under Sultan Suleiman.
The first episode premiered with decent ratings and we, the viewers, were adequately smothered with Altan-fever. But at the same time, our mental crevices spasmed, like the cramped muscles that have forgotten how to work out.
Where Ertugrul had elevated him to almost sacred figure level in public imagination, Barbarrosa showcased him as Oruc, a tanned, red bearded, cap sleeved leader of a ragtag men, ensconced with a (Christain) woman, far from the familiar plains of Anatolia. Naturally the dissonance was jarring for the us who were rusty in their Alta devotion.
But we were also stubborn fans who would cling to the show until the unfamiliar landscapes and characters seepee into our beings. But the makers didn't have that kind of patience. And so the panic erupted.
As the show's ratings dwindled every Thursday, the makers followed what seemed to have been their plan B all along. The director and writer were changed; Storylines altered so brutally that poor Despina (Oruc's wife) was forgotten barely an episode after her death. Khizr suddenly lost all interest in the woman he had been fraternizing with and off went Zeynep to Cairo, heartbroken and as confused as we were upon watching these tonal shifts unfold.
If the characters were going through -what felt like- amnesia on screen, the audience clearly wasn't. It was like asking them to warm up to a stranger who switched faces every week.
We never quite got over it, even as the subsequent episodes showed a temporary rise in ratings, before a certain Mahkum swooped in to crash the leftover promise of Barbarossa.
Privateers or Pirates
The viewers never had a problem with creative licenses Turkish historicals take to fictionalize true events. With Barbarossa though, the writers abused the concept. It is one thing to present historical figures - sultans, warriors, and philosophers - as epitome of nobility, manifesting values of patriotism, piety and exemplary bravado; shows such as Kuruluş: Osman, Payitaht: Abdülhamid and the The Great Seljuks series have smartly pulled it off, the formula coming from Dirilis Ertugrul itself.
But with Barbarossa, the writers fell into a fundamental problem of bringing grafting 16th century maritime ethics into 21st century sensibilities without belittling the holier-than-thou status of the protagonists of such shows. I will not go into a history lesson here, but it is a documented fact that Barbarossa brothers took part in privateering - a state sanctioned raiding of ships as part of economic warfare that empires waged on each other- a common practice during the 1500s where they raided countless Italian and Spanish ships along the Mediterranean coast and traded off goods (and slaves). Oruc and Ilyas and later Khizr made a name for themselves where they privateered in partnership with the Kingdom of Tunisia and later the Ottomans.
The show however, wipes out the entire practice. The showrunners wanted to take zero chances and gave us four men who were neither pirates, nor privateers. The answer to who they really were, lies somewhere in rejected drafts of the pilot episode for sure.
Identity Crises
With the elimination of this most crucial of Barbarossa brothers' life and legacy, the showrunners were left scrambling for ideas to give these men identities which not only aligned with the values of goodness they were supposed to champion, but also gelled up with aesthetics of seamanship. Certainly an unparalleled challenge for any Turkish showrunner.
The results were confusing at best, and financially unthrifty at worst. I remember watching the first few episodes and found a show aspiring to be a gritty, dramatic tale of four sailors; Oruc and Ilyas: sweaty, amulet laden, impulsive nobodies starting out in the big, bad, thuggish world of sea gangs; Ishaak: the eldest, peace-loving family man; and Khizr: an erudite, wordwise man with inkling for trouble, lover of (safe) seas trapped in his separate whimsical thriller of ancient knowledge.
If a rejected trailer of the show is taken at face value, one can clearly see the ambiance the show had planned to embrace. It was murkier, ghostlier. Oruc and Khizr resembled tattered corsairs, with their beads strewn arms and necklines, threadbare vests and greasy curls.
But this criminally romanticized vibe would have been a far departure for TRT and Eltan. The show then became a hybrid of sorts, with righteous, danger loving men in frayed garbs costumes. But before the show found any footing, the dismal ratings sent makers running in a completely opposite direction.
Soon the Ottoman state entered the picture. The sailors became statesmen. Marauder's attire was replaced by demure, gentlemanly apparel. Plotlines were abandoned. The European lineage of the brothers brushed under the Alexandrian sand and phrases like devlat , Islam, intikam icin were thrown around. Alot.
Four distinct personalities convulsed into one and now all brothers were valiant, flag-waving, sword-loving, bone-breaking soldiers of the state. Perhaps to pacify the nerves of some Altan fans who didn't like him playing second fiddle to Ulas Tuna Astepe's Khizr, a hot-headed Oruc turned into a wise, judicious leader.
In trying to kill two birds with one stone - to blend in but also to be distinct with its unique setting - Barbarosa retained the identity of neither. It lost whatever novelty it had strived to deliver.
Winning over an already warrior-fatigued audience had become the new battleground for showrunners, who proved even more inept in imitation.
Water Water and Water
The biggest challenge in turning Barbarossa into a viewership-spiking spectacle complete with tried and tested plotlines, was (at one point) the show's biggest draw. The water.
Showing extensively choreographed, part CGI, naval battle sequences is a costly endeavor. It also requires expertise and will, both of which were missing in Barbarossa.
How do you set up a cinematic battle sequence on water if you don't have a budget of a Pirates of the Caribbean? Well, you can't. And this meant that no matter how much chest-thumping background score was bombarded on to us, the Aatiish screaming warriors could not replicate the kinetic, blood curling, adrenaline pumping energy of a ground battle.
So the Barbarossa brothers fought mostly on ground, where their swords could turn scarlet, swashbuckling men could brandish blades and some filmable action could be inserted into the sequence. It was a much needed respite from the inertness of naval battles staged on green screens, where showing a fleet flinging bombs in all its might was beyond the scope of the technical department.
But if filming on water proved a hindrance, far more achievable aspects of the craft proved even more elusive for the showrunners.
The Craft
The intricacies of 16th century maritime politics, with a huge caste of characters scattered across islands, meant that Barbarossa was buried under a duty to explain-and accessorize- its conflicts.
Each scene carried relentless exposition and on-the-nose dialogue. When the words breathed, rarely, the loud symbolism followed, of flags, of beheadings, of Turkish/Ottoman/religious supremacy.
Scenes became remarkably bland and repetitive (I can't count the number of times a brother nearly dies as a cliffhanger). The show was set in Alexandria, Kalimnos, Medilli and later, Algeria. There was even a sequence in Andalus. But most of the frames lacked a visual identity. Each of these diverse worlds lacked detail and hence couldn't authenticate the clumsy storytelling that dropped characters in the midst of these backdrops with no sense of livid-in-ness.
The scenes existed solely to impart more information; The characters - already butchered and remolded once - now existed to serve the screenplay- which moved faster than the characters- and not vice versa.
The series really wanted to convince us that it knows what it's talking about, with dialogues sounding like an audiobook of jumbled wikipedia entries. It's sad when writers don't trust their viewers to read between the lines, and so when everything is spelled out for us -sometimes three times in a single scene- it's like makers are looking down on us and having a laugh.
Barbarossa Hayreddin
Not that any historical show sets out to service the iconic lives it has decided to fictionalize, but for Barbarossa, the disservice to the four legendary brothers is borderline tragic. The writers were so much in awe of their protagonists that they reduced them to one-note bylines. While a reserved reverence for the main leads is found in all historicals, in Barbarossa, it seemed to border on sacred untouchability.
None of the four brothers were afforded a genuine character treatment. It felt like none of them ever lived a lot in between scenes. They existed purely to be in a costume, stand beside a historical facade, utter lines and then dissipate into thin air when the camera stopped rolling.
Aside from a handful of conversational scenes between Khizr and Dervish, we never really got to know the makings of the young man who called himself the 'smartest son' of his father. The show refused to engage with stillness of his self doubts as no moment was ever allowed to breathe.
There was no human aspect to Khizr's journey. His character, like the others, talked too much, with the wisdom reeking of what the writers were thinking, not what his character might be.
Is there hope for Season 2?
With 90 percent of the cast unceremoniously killed off towards the season finale, the writers surely have less to fumble with. Concentrating on a single hero seemed to be right up their alley. Since the timeline will feature Khizr - now Hayreddin Barbarossa's- successful partnership with Sultan Suleiman, it feels like the threads now are much more aligned for the mediocre talents weaving them.
So the answer is yes. Khizr's solo journey- if managed wisely- can see a revival for Barbarrosa. The ship has not yet sailed.