Keep in mind that the Arthur legends are exactly that – legends. There’s not really a lot to pick apart per se, because there’s about 5-10 different versions of the story. There are some stories where The Sword in the Stone and Excalibur are the same sword, some where they’re different. Some where Morgan La Fey is a good person, some where Morgana is bad.
So anyone who tries to pick it apart is going to have a hard time, because there’s no one definitive narrative. Yeah, they take some hefty license with the clothing Morgana wears, for example (no woman in that time period would wear what amounts to a nightgown, much less her hair down,) but it’s something pretty easy to overlook, as there wasn’t magic either.
I think it’s neat that they built a time machine just to go back ten years and find Matthew Lilliard to play Arthur and Selma Blair to play Morgan. Seems like they could have gone back and killed Hitler, though.
Or did they already go back and kill someone worse than Hitler?!
I have a question. How did Lot know who Arthur’s parents were when he was taken there in secret by Merlin and only Merlin knew and as far as I know, no one else had been told?
While I assume Merlin took Arthur there in secret, I don’t believe he brought him back in secret. As there were two men following them (Lot’s son and the one we never see), they were probably following Merlin from the start when he left the castle, followed him to Arthur, perhaps had orders to kill anyone with Merlin (suspecting the wizard had something up his sleeve)… all leading to Lot knowing where Merlin got Arthur from, thus allowing him to send people to go get Arthur’s parents.
I actually really liked the way they handled the sword. Even though I’m a huge fan of the sort of story where Uther or some other previous king jammed the sword into the store and declared the man to pull it free to be the next king, the idea that Merlin is (fairly) immortal and he put the sword there himself hundreds of years ago to create a legend that would allow him to decide who gets to be king tickles me.
I fell asleep and missed the whole sword in the stone thing, then woke up again to see the end.
The little smirk that Joe Fiennes always has kept making me think he was going to make magical moves and start producing cards and flowers as The Final Countdown played. Oh, and they really liked his cloak going blowey blowey behind him.
Also love the trope that doing magic makes your nose bleed. I guess it’s like telepathy.
Oh yeah, boobies.
Basically, afterwards, the wife and I said, “If you don’t want to watch this one, I won’t argue,” almost simultaneously.
I thought part 2 was great. The sword in the stone was handled in an awesome way, and holy shit can Joseph Fiennes pull off an amazing Merlin. The part where it’s observed by some that he never ages was also a nice touch, not to mention the little quip about how maybe he put the sword there just to see his own prophecies fulfilled.
I went into this with zero expectations and was pleasantly surprised. I doubt that this show has HBO quaking in their boots, but it’s better than 90% of the other fantasy series of the last couple of decades.
They’re doing a nice job of mixing things up just enough to keep things interesting without straying fundamentally from the main legend.
And, hey, if it does well they have enough storylines to last ten or more seasons.
By and large I was pleased by the first two episodes, but I have a feeling in the long run I’m going to dislike the Arthur and Guinevere actors so much that I quit watching. Neither of them appear to be great actors, and they are both WAY too pretty and WAY to light-weight looking for the roles. Its like watching an SI Swimsuit issue, not a dramatic series.
The show has been pretty bad the last couple weeks. I’m really disappointed in the drop in quality after the first two episodes. Arthur and Merlin riding to Morgana castles alone made no sense, and all this Guinevere drama has moved too fast to be credible.
I am glad they are taking a fresh approach, but all I can think when I am watching it is how I would rather be watching Excalibur again.
I have watched the first 3 and will watch 4, but as someone else stated, once GoT starts, I think it will suffer by comparison and I will lose interest entirely.
Was at a relatives in the US for the long weekend and watched the last episode of this. It’s like Hercules/Xena without the “tongue-in-cheekness”, which is another way of saying that it is very bad. I was hoping the Movie Network would pick it up like Spartacus, but now don’t care either way.
Watched the first two episodes of this over the weekend. I like the look of it, the sets, the cinematography and the costumes. I like the bits of the legends they’ve decided to include and I think they’re cobbling it together into a somewhat interesting story. Feinnes is excellent as Merlin, and I like many of the supporing cast as well. My one big complaint, and it’s a killer, is Arthur. He is simply too weak. The character is weakly written and the actor is not good enough to overcome this.
I realize that this show isn’t going to take on Game of Thrones in any serious way, but I wanted it to be a good diversion and as HumanTon says it’s nice to have some decent fantasy on TV once in awhile. If the Arthur character doesn’t improve soon though I really don’t forsee sticking with the show.
So is this show just dead now that Game of Thrones came on? I haven’t seen the last two episodes, though they’re sitting there to be watched but whenever I think of it I always feel like there’s something better I can do with my time. Like anything.
The shit with Morgan and the nun was excruciatingly bad and they spent way too much time on it. Arthur looks decent when he’s decked out in the full king’s garb and crown, but whenever he’s just got his studded vest on he looks super wimpy. Joseph Fiennes’ Merlin is the only reason to watch this show.
Merlin is a good character, and so is Morgan (or at least she was until the whole head-scratchingly terrible nun-trial incident*.)
But so far the rest of the characters are banal. When Arthur’s posse was off fetching the library and one of them started having flashbacks, I was confused. Why did this utterly generic guy rate a flashback? Only then did I remember he was supposed to be Arthur’s brother.
If the character’s aren’t memorable, you’re not going to care about them. This extends to Arthur and Guinevere as well: so far there’s nothing about either one of them that warrants me caring about them. Oh sure, Arthur is brave and just and merciful and all that. But that’s a laundry list of attributes of the ideal king, not attributes of an interesting fictional character. I wish the show’s developers had spent some as much time re-thinking Arthur as they did Merlin and Morgan.
Without interesting characters to work with, the whole will-they-or-won’t-they romance has no teeth to it. We all know how it turns out, and because we don’t care about the characters we don’t really care how it affects them. It’s all just waiting around for the inevitable at this point.
*“Listen, my good people, I didn’t mean to burn down the nunnery. It was an accident, the sort of accident that might happen to anybody who was sacrificing virgins to the Dark Lord. And surely now that you’ve heard my well-thought-out explanation you will let me go?”
