Most critics take to The Last Kingdom as a lively, grimy adventure that holds its own against the obvious comparison with Game of Thrones rather than copying it. Six of eight reviews are positive. The praise gathers around the battle scenes, which several find inventive and brutal, and around the cast: Emily Cox’s Brida is singled out more than once for her earthy humour and her rapport with Uhtred, and Rutger Hauer is said to steal the show. The collision of pagan and Christian cultures is noted as one of the series’ more thoughtful strands.
The two dissenters are firm rather than lukewarm. The Independent finds it less silly than Game of Thrones but also less exciting, faulting a convoluted plot and genre clichés, while The i Paper, reviewing the second series, thinks it too polished and bloodless to land the gritty impact it wants. Between those and the warmest notices there is a wide spread, though nobody sits in the middle.