Looking for a Game of Thrones substitute? Vikings is the closest you’ll get – but it ain’t close

Did you know that the 8th-century Kingdom of Northumbria was the epicentre of an international exotic reptile trade? I only discovered this myself from watching episode six of Vikings (History Channel, Tuesday) and being introduced to the snake-pit maintained by King Aelle.

What particularly impressed me were not just the variety of pythons and boas at the bottom of the pit but also their excellent state of health. Somehow, the Northumbrians must have adventured as far afield as Africa, South America and Asia, captured the snakes, then learned to maintain them in optimal conditions, perhaps by inventing some early form of electricity to power the infrared lamps in their glass tanks and stop them freezing to death as they otherwise quickly would have done in the chilly clime of Dark Ages northern England.

At least I hope that’s the explanation. The alternative is just too depressing: that the makers of Vikings had so little respect for their viewers’ intelligence that they just went: ‘Sod it. Let’s just bung in any old snakes. It’s not like anyone’s going to know any different.’

Maybe 30 years ago that would have been true. Remember the snake-pit scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? They were all constrictors too (apart, I think, from one random cobra, which was obviously behind a pane of glass), which made an absolute mockery of the notion that Indiana Jones was in any serious peril. Well, it did in my eyes, anyway. But I’m sure it went over most of the audience’s heads. ‘Euugggh! Snakes!’

Times, though, have surely moved on. We’ve since had two or three decades’ worth of specialist animal TV programmes in which intrepid presenters like the late Steve Irwin and Mark O’Shea have taught us a) to respect snakes rather than fear them, and b) to see them not as generic, slimy, bitey creatures but as distinct species (venomous types that kill their prey with poison; constrictors, which squeeze their prey to death).