The History Channel has announced that it’s working with medieval weapons enthusiast Jeremy Renner to produce a new drama series about the fall of the Knights Templar. The series, which will cover the arrest, torture, and burning at the stake of the historical religious order’s members, will be titled Knightfall, because nothing lightens up some old-timey murder like a little light punning. Given that this is The History Channel, though, it can be assumed that the series will hew tightly to historical veracity; especially since Knightfall comes courtesy of Hawkeye, the producers of the Mission: Impossible movies, and Jeff Pinkner of Alias—a show that asked the daring historical question, “What if Leonardo Da Vinci had been a psychic wizard man who also invented computers?”
For the interested, here’s a bit of background on the Knights Templar, shamelessly cribbed from Wikipedia in a method that probably bears no resemblance whatsoever to the script-writing process for Knightfall: Long a topic of fascination for conspiracy fans and anyone in need of a spooky name to toss on their video game baddies, the Order was founded during the Crusades, where its members fought alongside King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the old knight from the end of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. They were eventually wiped out in the 14th century by the Catholic Church due to heresy, and definitely not because the Templars were also bankers who had a ton of gold just hanging around. The organization was targeted specifically for its initiation rites, where, according to coerced confessions from the initiates, “recruits were forced to spit on the cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing.” In other words, Renner might be producing History Channel’s sexiest series yet, especially for all the crucifixion-expectoration fetishists out there.