New Shows: Merlin

Merlin

This BBC program (no, you can’t watch it on American TV yet. You need to steal it on-line or wait for a year. Stop bitching) is a fun, Smallville-type look at the early years of Merlin and King Arthur. Well, kind of. They decided to make Merlin into a teenager and still put him in the same place as Arthur -- so they made them the same age, and Merlin is Arthur’s servant. And for some reason, Uther Pendragon is alive and well and Arthur is Prince, without stepbrother Kay or anything else viewers might recognize from fond memories of The Sword in the Stone. Now, we’ll admit we’re not terribly familiar with the original legend (wrong mythology) but we’re fairly certain that Arthur being an orphan was established when Arthur’s childhood was first mentioned. And we know that Merlin ain’t supposed to be his teenaged sidekick. Then we have the fact that Arthur’s love interest isn’t Guinevere, but Morgana, who is recast from half-sister and evil enchantress to a member of Uther’s court -- and Guinevere is her servant and Merlin’s love interest. Okay… oh, and Guinevere’s Black. Not to sound racist, but there weren’t a lot of African women around in the Middle Ages -- and their race would certainly not be completely ignored like Guinevere’s is in Merlin.

Okay, so Merlin has made so many changes to the mythos that it’s pretty much unrecognizable as the King Arthur myth. And it has a tendency to hit the note of “Merlin knows there’s bad magic, but he can’t reveal it because magic is outlawed and nobody will believe him” a bit too often. But if you can forget the fact that it’s supposed to be Camelot, and ignore the occasionally anachronistic dialogue (mostly insults, oddly enough), it’s a fun generic fantasy romp.

All scores are from 1-5
Hephaestos (Plot): 2
Zeus (Character): 4
Apollo (Dialogue): 3
Athena (Intelligence): 2
Dionysos (Fun): 3
Hermes (Overall): 3