What time is Gunpowder on TV?

Who’s in the cast?

The show is led by Game of Thrones star Kit Harington. But he’s not playing Guy Fawkes (who was actually just the fall guy for the operation), but Robert Catesby, the real mastermind of the plot. The famous Fawkes is instead portrayed by Downton Abbey’s Tom Cullen.

Lord of the Rings star Liv Tyler plays Anne Vaux and Mark Gatiss takes on the role of Robert Cecil.

You can find out full details about the cast here.

Does Kit Harington have a personal connection to the story?

Funny you should ask: turns out that the actor is actually related to his character. Harington is an ancestor of plotter Robert Catesby on his mother’s side.

Is it any good?

A cart loaded with wooden barrels arrives to be stowed in that vaulted undercroft beneath the House of Lords. We already know, of course, what the barrels contain, and what they’re intended for, just as we know how the Gunpowder Plot will play out.

But the great thing about the drama is the way it makes us share the pain of the Catholic plotters and their dream of a coup d’état, even when we know it – and they – are doomed.

The final episode traces their downfall with a slow, sad logic. As Catesby, leader of the rebels, Kit Harington has a bruised, noble manner that comes through in the scene on the grey morning of 5 November 1605 when news reaches him that all is lost and he rallies his men for one last stand. It’s a cruel end to a satisfyingly dark piece of historical drama.Review by David Butcher

You can read our full preview for the series here.

Does Kit Harington think the show looks a little, you know, Game of Thrones?

Oh yes – his costume certainly reminded of his time filming the Westeros show. He told Radiotimes.com “There was a certain level of this being in a cloak and with a sword and all of that, and I thought ‘here we go again.’”