Saturday, September 20, 2008

Merlin: The Doctor's Saturday Night Replacement

From timesonline: The success of Doctor Who, and to a lesser extent Robin Hood, on Saturday nights encouraged producers Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy to develop an ambitious new version of the legend of Merlin and Arthur, geared for a new type of audience. “We didn’t want to make a 15th-century version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. We wanted to produce something that merged the legend with big family entertainment,” Murphy says. “That’s something Doctor Who has made possible. The BBC is more willing to commission innovative and fantastical programmes.”
As they looked at how to approach Merlin, their first influence was the US show Smallville. Merlin aims to do for the Arthurian legend what Smallville has done so effectively for the story of Clark Kent – recounting his life long before he became Superman. Set in a Camelot that existed before the golden age, it is a kingdom in which knights sit around a square table, where Lady Guinevere is a servant girl called Gwen, where magic is banned, and Merlin and Arthur are young men.
Follow the link to read all the story.
Merlin has aired on the BBC today

2 comments:

robin hood said...

Having screwed up Robin Hood towards the disastrous and appallingly conceived ending to series 2, the BBC must have high hopes for Merlin.

For me at least, episode 1 was dull and disappointing.

The sets locations seemed totally wrong, the main character lacked any charisma at all, and the "magic" came in the form of cheesey effects rather than "atmosphere".

Normally I'm a big (big) Eve Myles fan, but not here.

I did think Arthur was well cast and very good.

Charles F Millhouse said...

I liked it, sure it wasn't great, but it has the chance to work into a fine story. I'll just have to wait and see.