‘Outlander: Blood of My Blood’ review: Prequel lacks drama

Has there ever been a love as true, wild and literally epic as that of “Outlander’s” Claire Beauchamp (Caitríona Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan)?

Made possible by a circle of standing stones (and the imagination of Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the novels on which the series is based), the all-but-instant passion of a British time-traveling former WWII nurse and a young Scottish Highlander has survived war, torture, rape, shipwreck and innumerable other perils encountered separately and together on four continents.

So it’s not surprising that, as “Outlander” approaches its eighth and final season, there would be interest in the forces that shaped such a love. (Especially when it involves expanding what has been Starz’s signature show for more than a decade.)

This is just what “Outlander: Blood of My Blood” aims to do by chronicling the courtship and marriages of Jamie’s parents — Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) — and Claire’s — Julia (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine).

Casting directors Simone Pereira Hind and Suzanne Smith deserve praise for finding Roy and Corfield, fine actors who also bear an uncanny resemblance to their fictional children.

There’s plenty to love about “Blood of My Blood,” especially a return to the 18th century Highlands, with tartans, castles and craggy tors aplenty. There’s the beloved Castle Leoch, complete with a young Mrs. Fitz (Sally Messham) and Ned Gowan (Conor MacNeill), casting calm on troubled waters after the death of Jamie’s grandfather, “Red Jacob” MacKenzie (Peter Mullan), has left a leadership vacuum.

The bright and spirited Ellen was his favored child, but as a woman, she cannot be a laird. That leaves her brothers, Colum (Seamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford), to fight each other, and any likely comer, while plotting an advantageous marriage for Ellen. Alas for them, Ellen locks eyes with Brian Fraser, bastard son of sworn enemy Simon Fraser (Tony Curran), at the clan gathering and the rest is, or will be, history.

Claire’s parents, though never divided by warring clans, have just as romantic a backstory. As a shell-shocked WWI soldier, Henry wrote from the trenches a letter decrying the war’s brutality; working in the censor’s office, Julia read it and responded. A meeting of minds led to love, marriage and Claire (conveniently visiting her archaeologist uncle when the couple was traveling to the Highlands). So another story of unlikely desire strengthened by hardship (including Henry’s PTSD) and peril (including dramatic separation).

Those darn standing stones are at it again, claiming first Julia Moriston Beauchamp (Hermione Corfield) and then Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) in “Outlander: Blood of My Blood.”

(Sanne Gault / Starz)

Spoiler alert: Claire’s parents did not die in a car crash as she, and we, were led to believe in “Outlander.” On a trip through the Highlands that echoes the one Claire took with then-husband Frank (Tobias Menzies), Julia and Henry do have an accident, but they survive uninjured. Searching for a way back to their inn, they discover, you guessed it, ye olde Craigh na Dun.

And those darn stones are at it again, claiming first Julia and then Henry.

It is an obvious and laughable twist, but what’s the point of being in the “Outlander” universe without a little time travel. And the notion that Claire and Jamie’s instant enduring connection might have its roots in something more mysterious than hormones is intriguing.

By the sixth and seventh season of “Outlander,” so many people had passed, and repassed, through those stones (and their international counterparts) that Craigh na Dun had begun to feel less like a mystical portal and more like a metro station. Next stop: 1714.

Because they do not pass together, Julia and Henry wind up in the same year but in very different circumstances. Julia is quickly abducted by a tenant family who gives her to Simon in payment of a debt with absolutely no objection from anyone, including Brian Fraser and his mother, Davina (Sara Vickers). (Julia’s posh British accent and very strange clothing, never mind her insistence that she’s already married, likewise raise no questions.)

Henry, meanwhile, winds up accidentally impressing clan leader Isaac Grant (Brian McCardie) enough to become his bladier (legal counsel); his duties will come to include arranging the marriage of Grant’s son Malcolm (Jhon Lumsden) to Ellen.

So you can see where this is going — as Henry and Julia struggle to find each other, each play a part in bringing Jamie’s parents together.

Those who have watched “Outlander” will know the outcome and general outlines of Ellen and Brian’s forbidden love, just as they know who will emerge as head of the clan. Fortunately, Slater’s Ellen is a highly engaging heroine; Roy makes Brian a sympathetic swain; and meeting earlier versions of well-known characters, including Murtagh (Rory Alexander) and Ellen’s sister Jocasta (Sadhbh Malin), is great fun.

One can only hope that Ellen will eventually see in Julia a mirror of her own situation — both women are trapped by male domination — and help a girl out. But this is a series, not a film, so we will have to wait and see.

Juggling two main love stories and multiple time periods (Red Jacob makes several appearances in flashbacks) is wildly ambitious. Still it’s a bit strange that in the six episodes made available to critics, the Beauchamps, whose story is far more mysterious (“Blood of My Blood” is not based on any of Gabaldon’s novels), wind up with the short end of the dramatic stick. With Ellen positioned as the spiky, stubborn, active lead, Julia is condemned to a softer, more submissive role — in letters that one can only hope Claire will somehow find in the final season of “Outlander,” she chronicles her anguish and confusion, which is not as effective as showing them. As Henry, Irvine delivers a nuanced performance as a man deeply affected by war, but he is not terribly creative, or effective, in his search for Julia.

More important, neither she nor Henry are able to make much use of the fact they are time travelers. Neither attempts to learn more about the standing stones or figure out how they can get back to their own time — Julia has no way of knowing that Henry is not still in the 20th century — never mind trying to situate themselves in history in a way that might benefit their plight. (Hint: a major Jacobite rebellion is a few months away.)

And that is the show’s biggest failing.

As a prequel to “Outlander,” “Blood of My Blood” has two strong love stories and many footnote-like attractions, but it lacks, through no fault of its cast, the multilevel tensions of its predecessor.

“Outlander” is a romance to be sure — the fate of Claire and Jamie, together and separately, propels the emotional connection. But it is also about the realities, and potential responsibilities, of moving through time. In early episodes, Claire’s struggles to accept and control her situation allowed viewers to imagine what it might actually feel like to find oneself 200 years in the past. Forced to confront the darker sides of her country’s history, personified by the sadistic psychopath Captain Jack Randall (Menzies), she tries, for the first two seasons, to prevent a British victory in the fields of Culloden.

Perhaps in response to the “rape glut” criticism that dogged “Outlander,” even the villains are less threatening. Simon Fraser is lecherous and mean-spirited, but he’s no Black Jack Randall. The Jacobites are mentioned, but most of the political machinations involve interclan jockeying. Instead we are left with Henry attempting to install a kinder, gentler way of taxing the peasantry; Julia scheming to keep her pregnancy safe; and Ellen and Brian preparing to risk it all for love.

Mercifully, we are at least back in Scotland, a big rebellion is on its way and if “Outlander” is any gauge, another time traveler should be showing up sometime very soon.