bestselling

The ‘outstanding’ historical drama, adapted from a best-selling book series, has been dubbed ‘highly addictive’ by fans who are calling it ‘a treat to watch’ — streaming free on Channel 4

An under-the-radar period drama currently streaming free on Channel 4 is being hailed as a masterpiece adaptation of a best-selling book series — and viewers are ‘obsessed’.

The series, originally developed for the BBC, delves into Britain’s history and is based on real events that took place in the 1400s in the tumultuous battle for the throne of England. With the War of the Roses as the backdrop of the historical drama, the series takes a closer look at real-life incidents and the drama surrounding court politics at the time.

The period drama is based on author Philippa Gregory’s Cousins’ War book series and has been adapted from three best-selling novels — The White Queen, The Red Queen, and The Kingmaker’s Daughter.

The costume drama is an amalgamation of stories, characters, and instances from all three books and follows the story of three women — Yorkist Elizabeth Woodville, wife of King Edward IV and played by Rebecca Ferguson; Lancastrian Margaret Beaufort, mother of the Tudor King Henry VII of England and portrayed by Amanda Hale; and Yorkist Anne Neville, wife of the Duke of Gloucester, King Richard III, portrayed by Faye Marsay.

Elizabeth Woodville is the protagonist of the 2009 novel The White Queen, while Margaret Beaufort and Anne Neville are the focus of The Red Queen (2010) and The Kingmaker’s Daughter (2012) respectively. These three women appear in the three novels which constitute the screenplay of this underrated television drama which first hit UK airwaves in June 2013.

The series has been on the receiving end of glowing reviews from both critics and audiences.

One critic says of the show: “As a love story set in an impossibly chivalrous past, this was deliciously enjoyable. The conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York ceased to matter — the crucial conflict was between Innocence and Experience.”

While another reviewer writes: “Part soap opera, part war film, and part melodrama, this series is an intoxicating jaunt through a snippet of British history fraught with contentious loyalties and lethal power struggles.”

A third critic said: “It’s a great tale and beautifully told with beautiful actors…Don’t miss it.”

One viewer posted to IMDB: “Fantastic!! The BBC, like most of their period piece dramas, got this series right. It is highly addictive and very watchable. The White Queen has everything an avid audience for this type of show craves; It is romantic; It is violent; It is full of vengefulness, cruelty and karma. I thoroughly enjoyed it and wanted more.”

While another fan of the show added: “Excellent period drama! BBC does it again! I came across this title by accident and I ended up watching the first four episodes! I love the love story, the drama, the betrayal. Truly a treat to watch! I really enjoyed it, I found the actors to be truly convincing, the decor lovely and the storyline engaging!”

Another IMDB user review reads: “I’ve read the 3 books, The White Queen, The Red Queen and The Kingmaker’s Daughter, and this series is one of the most faithful adaptations I have ever watched.

“The portrayal of the Tudor and Lancastrian England, the life and politics of the feudal society, how Kings and Queens and Great Royal Houses were made or unmade with in fire and blood, and the brilliance and fortunes of Edward’s court, with some artistic license from Philippa Gregory, make for a very compelling watch.”

While one audience review of the show on Rotten Tomatoes states: “I absolutely loved this mini-series. Gorgeous costumes, realistic scenery, intrigue, treachery, lies, unexpected twists and a torrid love story. Seriously, what more could you ask for?”

The White Queen is available to stream for free on Channel 4.

The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.

That book, and the stream of his that followed, seduced millions of readers, plenty of them no doubt hoping that with the proper dosage they, like Castaneda, might also transform into a crow and soar across the purple skies of the dusty Southwest. That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, “American Trickster,” reveals the depth of his deception — and, just as potently, how easily people can be taken in by it.

“He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,” Marshall writes. “He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.” This is a 1970s story, but anybody in the present can relate.

Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s, first at L.A. City College and later at UCLA, he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books. His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of “The Teachings” spoke effervescently about both.

Author Ru Marshall

(Allen Frame)

It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups “A Separate Reality” and “Journey to Ixtlan” — were massive bestsellers. Castaneda made it to the cover of Time magazine. His work provided George Lucas with more than a little inspiration for his master-and-student space opera, “Star Wars.” And he became a target for parodists, the surest sign of fame. Donald Barthelme satirized him in his story “The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge.”

That the ’70s American psyche, brutalized by Watergate and Vietnam, found solace in Castaneda’s sophistry isn’t surprising. More shocking is that the academic establishment tolerated it too: UCLA awarded him a PhD in anthropology with “Ixtlan” serving as his dissertation. Castaneda, Marshall writes, made an end run around the department’s Yaqui expert, with the other committee members overly impressed by his au courant melange of fieldwork and gauzy ruminations, despite the fact that his timelines and grasp of mycology didn’t make sense. “If we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so,” Don Juan mused. Perversely, Castaneda’s success proved him right.

“American Trickster,” at more than 600 pages, is at once more information about Castaneda than any reader needs, and not nearly enough. Marshall (who in 2006 published a novel, “A Separate Reality,” inspired by Castaneda), has gone to ground on every element of his subject’s life, from his upbringing in Peru to his celebrity (he’d find his way into the orbits of former Gov. Jerry Brown, Federico Fellini and Oliver Stone at various points), to the years before his death of liver cancer in 1998. By that point he’d focused his attention on Tensegrity, a modified martial arts practice demonstrated at pricey workshops, and gathered a host of followers, mostly women, who he played against each other and psychologically abused in various ways.

But who did this guy think he was? How did he come to invent such a strange spiritual system, and develop the nerve to sell it both to mainstream publishers and the academic establishment? Why did he keep a box of knives under his bed? “Carlos acted in the zone where the trickery of the cult leader and that of the literary hoaxer (and the anthropological hoaxer) overlap,” Marshall writes. But all the biographical detail brings us no closer to what made him such a successful triple threat of eyewash.

Perhaps a book that couched Castaneda’s story more deeply in the context of the ’70s counterculture and the nature of cults past and present would make his story clearer. But perhaps not — his tale is inevitably something to wonder at, evidence of humans’ capacity to spin a yarn that flatters our egos and urge to understand our spiritual selves, and to buy into what’s spun.

Maybe it’s unsurprising that one of the first people to publicly sound the alarm about Castaneda was a novelist. In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review questioning a credulous review of Castaneda’s books. (The New York Times had spiked a more skeptical one, Marshall reports.) “It is quite possible that Don Juan represents a ‘non-ordinary’ reality so strange to me that I cannot accept it, and must try to reason my way out of believing,” she wrote. “But I don’t think so… I’d be very interested in whether other readers share my bewilderment.” No doubt others did. But what if bewilderment was exactly what they were seeking?

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”