Starz
You know something is fishy from the off with Outlander – a British woman with suspiciously good teeth. It’s 1945 ffs. Claire Beauchamp Randall (Caitriona Balfe) is the name and nursing’s the game. The Allies have just seen off the Hun and that’s the cue for Claire to disappear up to Jockland with her historian husbland Frank (Tobias Menzies) after five years of separation to “reconnect”. Oh he’d like to reconnect alright. Give her a good old reconnecting. Having arrived in a Highlands shitpit they learn of the local custom of smearing the blood of a black cockerel over the doorway. They do love their black cock up in the Highlands.
They do love their black cock up in the Highlands.
Claire voice-overs that Frank was a spymaster during the war. “He sent dozens of men behind enemy lines on secret missions. Most never came back.” LOLwhut? He must have been seriously shite at his job. A greater than 50% mortality rate? What is this Das Boot? That’s practically fucking treason.
Anyway, Frank soon gets to “reconnecting” with Claire. He eats her box in a castle until she comes so hard that 15 miles away several stunned kestrels fall to their deaths. Our suspicions are confirmed when some old bitch reads Claire’s tea leaves. “You’ve a strong mount of Venus. To be polite about it: your husband isnae likely to stray far from your bed!” she chuckles “No, seriously: you’re a proper slag. A real dirty bitch”. What can it all mean?
We start getting some clues when after witnessing some disgusting Druid pagan savagery Claire touches a sacred stone and finds herself transported back to 1743. Mental right? Even more nuts is how her husbland’s ancestor and splitting image Jonathan Wolverton “Black Jack” Randall, Captain of His Majesty’s Dragoons, immediately runs into her and tries to put a bit of a raping on her. What is this the White Queen?
Small wonder that she takes up with a sweaty stinky band of Jock rebels, warns them of an English ambush and fixes up a roughly handsome Highlander’s dislocated shoulder. Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) has certainly got a bone he’d like to put in her socket in return.
Her modern nursing skills quickly make her indispensable, as do her nipples which her wispy gossamer dress hangs off. “Yer tits are like a pair of poached eggs, hen.” Jamie tells her “I prefer mine like two big old saddlebags. Nae offence, like.”
She may be a fledgeling time traveller struggling to adjust to a new world but Claire vows there and then to make Jamie see that small but shapely beats big and unwieldy every time. I assume that’s the premise of the entire series and while this is as cornball as they come that’s a message we can all get behind.
The verdict: Bravetart
Marks out of 10: 6