A hearty endorsement from me this week, when the lauded-in-the-US-and-only-available-here-after-many-many-months three-parter Ren Faire comes to Sky Documentaries (Friday, 9pm). It is almost impossible to describe this show – in which a self-appointed “King” of the US’s longest-running renaissance fayre tries to find the right person to take over before he dies – without mentioning another HBO show in which an old man who pulses with impenetrable anger and weird horniness chooses someone to take over his job, and I have read a lot of coverage of it that hasn’t even tried. So I’m not going to, either: bit like Succession, isn’t it?
Ren Faire focuses on the power struggle beneath George Coulam, the octogenarian self-described visionary who created the Texas Renaissance festival in 1974. The festival only runs for six weeks a year, but in that time welcomes a half-million visitors and turns over millions of dollars. There are jesters and jousts and you can eat turkey drumsticks like they did in olden times. Men in steampunk-style hats say “my lord!” to you as you walk around and chide you for wearing modern fleeces. I don’t know how this makes millions of dollars either, but it does, and that’s why everyone wants a piece of it.
