Ren Faire review – the hilarious, heartbreaking tale of a furious power struggle … fuelled by jousting | Television & radio

This show is King Lear if Lear was on sugar-daddy dating sites and had a loudly stated interest in “natural breasts.” This is Inheritance in Tudorbethan costume. It’s every backstabbing reality show – but real. It’s Game of Thrones with kirtis instead of wolf pelts. It’s Wolf Hall in fever dream and polyester. This is the three-part HBO documentary Ren Faire, a complete journey that confirms the feeling that if America didn’t exist, TV executives had to invent it.

The Texas Renaissance Festivalwhich runs for six weeks and brings in half a million visitors and several million dollars a year – is approaching its half-century anniversary. Its founder George Cullam – known as “The King” to his employees even when he’s not around – is now 86 and wants to retire and enjoy what he says are the last nine years of his life. Ideally, he would like to “get fucked to death” by an “escort … I would like a nice slim lady between 30 and 50”. If that fails, there’s Switzerland, where for $25,000 “they’ll kill you!”.

His successor is Jeff Baldwin, a former actor who has been at the fair for half his life, is a contractor at the will of the king and was recently promoted to general manager. “We have to keep the magic alive.” His rival is another longtime courtier, Louis Migliacchio, who comes from a family of businessmen and entrepreneurs and yearns to take the fair to the next level. He dreams of introducing technology, making the experience more immersive, organizing festivals across the country and starting a Ren Faire University, and is raising the hard cash to make a bid for the business. In episode two, a third competitor enters the fray. The power struggle between them is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking.

So, too—albeit with a slightly sharper intake of breath—is the king’s search for a queen and the struggle that ensues between his romantic side (“It’s the greatest glory, to be in love… You’ll be together even in paradise”) and, well, all his other sides, which are short-tempered at best, brutally callous and unfair at worst. George’s former best friends recall that he was suddenly fired after 35 years, without explanation, as his hunger to control everything surrounding the fair – and the town he incorporated around it, to get rid of as much as possible state and county intervention—increasing. And that’s before we look at Leonard, as he calls his penis. A pan of George’s bookshelf reveals a battered collection of relationship self-help books and erectile dysfunction treatment manuals. “If you get an injection every week, you can have an erection until you die,” he tells us. It’s possible to find someone’s honesty endearing and at the same time recoil.

Director Lance Oppenheim relies on the aura of fantasy that the Renaissance faire creates and depends on—the shots are lush and the camera often giddy. But the emotional focus is always sharp. Beneath the overt narrative of who gets custody of George’s money-making and/or magical creation, Ren Faire is the story of human need. There are people who run to the world of reenactments because they love a nice day outside, of course. But there are many more – especially among those who then devote themselves to one and their capricious boss – who run from something and use it to fill a void they carry with them. And when loyalties are betrayed, when subjects are suddenly discarded, the shock is great and the pain is real. What would be an unbearably claustrophobic world for some is the greatest comfort for others. It is terrible to see people deprived of it. “I thought if I was faithful…” says one before letting the sentence trail off.

What a documentary. What a country.