Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Alexander: The Making Of A God’ On Netflix, A Docuseries-Scripted Hybrid About The Rise Of Alexander The Great

Between Netflix and the History Channel, there’s been a whole lot of docuseries that combine expert interviews with extensive scripted reenactments. It’s a hybrid format that aims to give context to the dramatic scenes that are playing out, but what ends up happening is that neither the experts nor the drama get enough space to really breathe. A new series about Alexander The Great is in this format. Will it solve the problem the other series like this haven’t?

ALEXANDER: THE MAKING OF A GOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “TEMPLE OF AMUN, SIWA OASIS, EGYPT.” Inside the temple, a woman says, “A war is coming.”

The Gist: Alexander: The Making Of A God is a six-part docuseries that examines the rise of Alexander The Great from his brief exile from his home in Macedonia, to becoming the “boy king” of the country at 20, to his eventual conquest of the massive Persian Empire. The story is told via expert interviews and extensive scripted reenactments.

As we see real-life scenes of Dr. Calliope Limneos-Papakosta presiding over an archaeological dig in Alexandria, finding new treasures from Alexander The Great’s ruling period, we encounter Alexander (Buck Braithwaite) in Illyria in 334 B.C.; the year before he exiled himself from Macedonia. There, he associates with his two closest confidants: Ptolemy (Dino Kelly) and Hephaestion (Will Stevens). In fact, the experts discuss how close Alexander and Hephaestion were, explaining that same-sex relationships were common in ancient Greece, and there was no real distinction between same-sex and opposite-sex pairings.

Alexander is called back to Macedonia to attend his sister’s wedding; his father, King Philip (Christopher Sciueref), is marrying the sister off to a local warlord. His mother, Olympias (Kosha Engler) was the supreme ruler over all of Philip’s wives, and held a lot of sway over Alexander. Philip talks of reconciliation, but is stabbed by one of his guards before the reception is over. With his father’s crown almost literally thrust on his head, Alexander becomes the new king and vows to fight the Persians, whom he is almost sure are behind the assassination.

In Babylon, Darius (Mido Hamada), the powerful Persian king, decides that the tumult in Macedonia provides him an opening to attack and conquer. One of Alexander’s generals, Attalus (James Oliver Wheatley) is battling the Persians on the edges of Persian territory, and he starts to question his loyalty to Macedonia.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The format of Alexander: The Making Of A God brings to mind other hybrid historical docuseries, like Queen Cleopatra. And Oliver Stone’s 2004 epic, Alexander, takes an even more bonkers approach to the same material.

Our Take: We’ve seen enough of these docuseries-scripted hybrids to know what works, and Alexander: The Making Of A God seems to do a good job of balancing the expert talking head sequences with the scripted dramatic reenactments. But, just like the other series we’ve seen of this type, we wonder if the topic of Alexander The Great would have been better served by making the show either a documentary or a drama.

The performances, especially Braithwaite as Alexander, are well-modulated; the actors play these people as real humans instead of something out of a Shakespeare play. But, as we’ve pointed out many times, using the interview-based narrative to drive the scenes gives the series no plot momentum; while the acting in the series is generally good, and the dialogue is actually not cringeworthy, the scenes are still disjointed because the connective tissue between them isn’t there.

Because Alexander’s story is extensive and sprawling, it’s also hard to keep track of who is who in the story if you’re not a scholar in Greek history. This, of course, is part of the narrative problem we mention above. By the end of the episode, we find out just where Attalus’ loyalties fell, but the story has gone in so many different directions at this point, we lost the thread on that part of the story and had to remind ourselves why he had to die and just who was killing him at the end of the episode.

Another victim of the disjointed storytelling is Alexander’s relationship with Hephaestion. While the concept of sexual fluidity in ancient Greece is discussed, and we see Alexander and Hephaestion get romantic with each other, we’re not sure if and when that topic will be explored later in the series. It feels like it’s there because it needed to be addressed, but doesn’t really lend itself to whatever story the scripted part of the series is trying to tell.

Sex and Skin: The aforementioned scene between Alexander and Hephaestion, as well as some scenes involving Darius.

Parting Shot: Darius is told by his right hand man that Attalus is dead and “the boy king” is coming for them.

Sleeper Star: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, a professor at Cardiff University, seems to love talking about Alexander so much that he smiles and smirks throughout his interview segments. It’s refreshing to see a talking head be so into his or her subjects that they actually look like they’re enjoying themselves.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Darius is told that he should respect Egypt’s most sacred symbol, the scarab, he replies, “It’s an insect that eats dung.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Alexander: The Making Of A God is one of the better of this strange docuseries-scripted hybrid shows we’ve seen, but these kinds of shows always seem to end up being unsatisfying to watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.