Merlin Finale Review and Series Overview
The BBC’s Revamp of the old Legend was fairly good Saturday Night TV
Dec 13, 2008
After watching through the 13 episode run there’s really only one way to sum Merlin up: that wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t amazing but as a 45-minute chunk of Saturday TV it was actually a fairly good way to spend an evening.
Le Morte d'Arthur was a high point
The final episode, “Le Morte d'Arthur”, was the most emotional and gripping of the lot and was perhaps the high point of the whole series. John Hurt’s dragon was finally fleshed out with a bit of character development and there was a confrontation between Merlin (Colin Morgan) and Nimueh (Michelle Ryan), albeit a short one.
And the ambiguous ending showed that there’s still more of this story to come and the series will return for another chapter of the story.
Less of the naff CGI Monsters
The series started off with a frothy mix of light-hearted adventure and teenage hijinks but became progressively darker, and ultimately better, as it went on.
What this show did really well was avoid much of the naff CGI that makes the whole thing look low budget. Yes, there were times when cheap looking monsters roamed on the screen but, unlike ITV’s hideous Primeval, the makers of Merlin knew that people who like Doctor Who enjoy the visuals but ultimately it’s the characters that draw you in.
Bradley James Shines as the young Prince Arthur
The acting in Merlin was not the best but that’s forgivable for such a young cast. True, the best performances were by the veterans Richard Wilson (even with his stupid hair), John Hurt and Anthony Head but the stand out from the new generation was Bradley James as Prince Arthur, because you actually saw him change and mature through the series from a brash idiot to a brave warrior. But this meant that for large sections of the series the title character was oddly sidelined.
The series’ use of colour-blind casting should be praised not touted as BBC political correctness. The Arthurian legend is just that; a legend, a myth, a story, and one that’s open to interpretation or re-imagination and that’s what BBC’s Merlin is. At least the creators had a decent stab at bringing a fresh turn to an over-told story for a family audience.
Magic makes the World go round
The difficulty with a show that has a central character who’s a magician is that all problems are solved very easily with a few magic words and hey presto, everything’s back to normal for a week. Also, whenever a unbeatable knight turned up, or there were strange deaths or famine the characters try every ridiculous idea before someone turns round and says “do you think it could be magic?”
Plus, given the setting, there’s a lot of fighting and swordplay but because it’s a family show you don’t get to see much of what goes on due to the endless amounts of cut aways and fast editing. Not to say it should be a bloodfest every time swords are drawn, just that the choppy camera work in these scenes gets a little tiresome.
But even though Merlin is a bit hammy, Saturday night TV would be much better if there was more Merlin and less X Factor. Please?
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