The BBC's 30-Part Assassin's Creed Meets Guy Ritchie Series Deserved At Least One More Season

Published Aug 24, 2026, 7:02 PM EDT Craig began contributing to Screen Rant in 2016 and has been ranting ever since, mostly to himself in a darkened room. After previously writing for various outlets, Craig's focus turned to TV and film, where a steady upbringing of science fiction and comic books finally became useful. Craig has previously been published by sites such as Den of Geek. Craig is an approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-elvy-5b31a3381/ For a game as cinematic and intense as Assassin's Creed, it's surprising that no live-action TV series has truly scratched that itch. Even on the big screen, the 2016 Michael Fassbender effort succumbed to the dreaded video game adaptation curse, giving Netflix a crack at the IP in an upcoming TV version set in Rome during 64 AD. If Netflix gets its Templars in a row, the Assassin's Creed series could be something to behold. In recent years, however, the TV show that has come closest to capturing the vibe and grandeur of Ubisoft's iconic games briefly aired on the BBC for three seasons between 2014 and 2016. Earning solid-but-unspectacular reviews, this series honored the sweeping historical settings and clandestine conspiracies that made Assassin's Creed famous, and combined those elements with a grittiness and bombast that wouldn't look out of place in a Guy Ritchie movie. That series was The Musketeers. Arriving on the BBC just as streaming was finding a new level of global prominence, The Musketeers has been lost in the pack over the past 12 years. Whether it deserved such a fate is another matter. Based, of course, on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, the series is hardly one for literary purists, but what it lacked in absolute fidelity to the source material, The Musketeers more than made up for in sheer sword-waggling fun. It was the cast that kept The Musketeers ticking across the entirety of its 30-episode, three-season run. Starring Tom Burke (Furiosa, Black Bag), Santiago Cabrera (Star Trek: Picard, Heroes), and Howard Charles (Shadow & Bone, Fightland) as the titular trio, alongside Skins' Luke Pasqualino as D'Artagnan, the awesome foursome forged a tight-knit onscreen bond that brought meaning to the camp capers and blatant historical liberties. The surprisingly strong supporting cast featured the likes of Peter Capaldi (before he was whisked off to do some time traveling), Rupert Everett, and Hugo Speer. Giving these players a proper playground in which to play, the city of Prague nobly stood in for 1600s Paris. It might not be the right city, but The Musketeers' on-location filming created a sense of scale so much bigger than your typical BBC offering. The Musketeers was never going to change the world, but its blend of melodrama and high-octane action might have found a more appreciative audience (and left a more enduring legacy) if the series had aired a few years later on a major streaming service. For that reason alone, The Musketeers deserved to run into season 4, perhaps even season 5. The Musketeers Is Probably The Best Live-Action Assassin's Creed We've Had With Netflix's interpretation still in development and the movie free-running straight into a wall, The Musketeers might just be the closest thing we have to a proper live-action Assassin's Creed experience. 17th century France is every bit as well-defined, colorful, and dangerous as the game franchise's various locales, and in the absence of Templars and Assassins, the Musketeers are charged with protecting France against its various enemies looking to bring down the king. The fact that some of these enemies are entrenched in the country's religious and political tapestry only accentuates the Assassin's Creed comparisons. Sure, Porthos isn't scaling cathedrals, and there isn't a modern-day perspective to the timeline, but the amount of assassination attempts, sword fights, and this-thing-only-has-one-shot-before-I-need-to-reload gunfights at least captures the same kind of feel, at least until Netflix's Assassin's Creed series comes along and tries to go one better. In terms of other adaptations of The Three Musketeers, the BBC's 2010s series perhaps doesn't beat the 1948 and 1973 movies, with Douglas Fairbanks' 1920s silent effort also still worthy. Compared to rival adaptations made within the past 50 years, however, it's The Musketeers that emerges victorious, especially against the tepid 2011 film iteration. Release Date 2016 - 2016-00-00 Network BBC One, BBC America Directors Nicholas Renton, Roger Goldby, Susan Tully Writers Jeff Povey, James Payne, Peter McKenna Cast Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Peter Capaldi, Howard Charles, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Tamla Kari, Maimie McCoy, Luke Pasqualino, Hugo Speer, Marc Warren, Matthew McNulty, Rupert Everett Creator(s) Adrian Hodges