Merlin - Season 1

Merlin is a bastardization of Arthurian legend that shows the supposed early years of Merlin and Arthur before he became king. There are lots of recognizable characters but they're all different from how they were cast in the stories; Lancelot appears as a commoner with knightly aspirations, Guinevere is a handmaiden, and so on. Casting a mythic wizard as a bumbling teenager is certainly a unique take, and you can understand them changing things to fit their new story - but why does it have to be about Merlin in the first place? Is the only way to get the BBC to fund your fantasy show making it about characters British people already recognize? I guess in the end I wouldn't care about the weird characterizations if the show was better.

The main reason I became interested in watching Merlin is that Anthony Head (who starred in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Giles, one of the show's best characters) plays Uther Pendragon, Arthur's magic hating dad and king of Camelot. Shortly thereafter it started airing on NBC, so I sat down to watch it - and was mostly disappointed. Merlin is a young man who has a gift of deep magical talent in a land where such works are cause for capital punishment, and early on he takes up residence with the court physician of Camelot (because the way to avoid persecution is to move closer to the people who will arrest you?) and becomes Arthur's servant, since a dragon tells him it's his destiny to protect him.

The first half of the season then follows a basic formula where some problem, generally magical in origin, affects the people or rule of Camelot, Merlin makes it worse with his own magic, and then someone bails his ass out at the last second. He does get better over time, but then a new problem appears; Merlin transitions rather quickly from clumsy would-be-hero to cold-blooded murderer. One episode, out of the blue, he decides to kill the antagonists outright with his magic, vaporizing them from behind. Just like that. Yeah, they were sacrificing Arthur to do something or other and it's his sworn duty to protect him, but that situation might have been resolvable without death, and he didn't even try. That's not the last time either, and the character rapidly becomes surprisingly wrathful for someone who so far has not been developed with that sort of disposition. It's just weird. Beyond these problems, the show is not entirely without its entertaining aspects, from the genuine friendship that develops between the two male leads to the whole subplot concerning the non-evil Morgana's own magical ability. Another season is coming, and I suppose I'll watch it.