This is just really fucking long so it can go under a cut

1. Keep Richelieu – probably technically cheating as this was out of most people’s control but still it throws the show for a loop initially in series 2 and it’s gets a bit messy scrabbling to re-establish without him. Then, makes it very hard to handle louis as a character without Richelieu to essentially keep him in check. There’s also very little historical record for how Louis xiii would rule without him and a bunch of historical stuff that just…Doesn’t work without Richelieu. The three musketeers is as good and successful as it is because it was largely unconcerned with historicity, but this is still a bit of an issue. Also then we wouldn’t really need rochefort and he’s incredibly uncomfortable to watch.

2. More…Things being carried through? I’m honestly not sure how to put this. This gets better as the series goes on tbh but there’s never really enough consistent influence from previous events we’ve seen or know happened. When it is done it’s really good and I’d like there to be more of it. I don’t need things to be directly mentioned by name some of the times they do this that are most successful are when it’s clear a character has a particular thing in mind without having to directly say that – but it could often do with other characters interacting with the same idea and that’s the part where stuff sometimes falls a bit short. I deffinitly don’t need them to get too naval gazey and sit down at the end of every episode and talk it over for ten minutes but occasionally a combination of characters who are all quite ‘im fine I can do this on my own’ need a bit of a catalyst (that catalyst is actually often aramis who’s the most interested in actually finding out whats going on with people, but that means that’s not very reciprocated -and he’s probably the worst offender of the ‘im fine’ thing – and also mostly absent when he’s understandably trying to deal with his own stuff). I’ve deliberately not mentioned my major issues with the…Format? In series 1 because overall with it being part of something that’s 3 series long I wouldn’t change it cause the positives outweigh the negatives but that is a major contributing factor to this in that series and my next point which is still an issue.

3. Madame de chevreuse being used as a character. She’s really interesting in the book and historically and could also tie into some arcs and connect people really well. More broadly the use and presence of female characters in the narrative sometimes leaves a lot to be desired (other interesting historical woman who also links a bunch of stuff together: gastons wife – makes the lorraine connection much more interesting and make more sense.). I think there is some clear effort with having very compelling female guest characters, doing existing female characters interestingly and with a good amount of screen time and focus (for the most part) and expanding the queen into a proper character to have another recurring female character – but also this could have gone a lot further, there are other people they could have used as recurring characters rather than stopping at expanding one and there are times when they could have given the female characters they did have more.

4. (This is related to 2) there is some unrealised potential in some storylines and characters (some of which would be realised by carrying stuff through more). This is mostly a ‘more show’ change there is stuff I’d want to see more of and we didn’t. You know, I like this show I could do with more hours of it. One of those things is a comment made in an interview about series one that they had wanted to do an lgbt storyline and hadn’t been able to make it work that series and they wanted to bring it in later – it would have been good if that had actually materialised. The show generally does a good job in exploring potential in characters who don’t get much in a lot of adaptions but constance remains glaringly full of potential as a character but not…Really used very well (that’s by no means unique to this particular version of the three musketeers, and yeah this one is probably better in a lot of ways than others but still).

5. (This is also related to 2&4 – in that it’s basically the cause for a large part of those issues I have). Eh….Focus? There are times I would have rather the show was focusing on other storylines or different characters within a storyline. This is somewhat subjective obviously (but also there are consistent issues with not focusing on certain people which is like an actual problem). Most glaringly: porthos’ storyline in series 2 should focus on him and not have a lot of focus on treville, in the same series aramis and porthos basically end up walking into the same brick walls over and over again for like 6 episodes cause…Their plots aren’t allowed to advance cause someone’s decided rochefort’s of all people needs to take priority so they have the same conversation with the same person 14 times…And this might be realistic but it doesn’t make great tv. On a similar note choosing to structure the third series around Athos (which they’ve said they did so not imagining it) is an interesting descision given of the four of them he probably has the least connection to anything else going on. It leads to this extremely arbitrary rivalry with grimaud (and they did this with him before in 1.09) that would have made more sense with pretty much any of the others. This is a contributing factor to both aramis and porthos basically having to go from 0-60 on characters arcs that series in about two episodes. There’s also literally a shot where constance is doing something and then dartagnan takes over and from then on this is his storyline and constance is just…Kind of there? (Constance could have had really interesting stuff going on this series with her having basically been running stuff and then the others come back from war and that’s just never really explored enough). I like some of the quieter storylines a lot and I like that they are done like that in a bunch of cases…But also it can become somewhat irrisponsible cause it relies on the audience to view all characters as equally human which they don’t always and counteracting those empathy gaps people have is important.