Less Than Magical

The funny thing about the Radio Times, being a BBC publication, is that it can gush praise about a new show in a slick, multi-page feature, then give it a very lukewarm write-up in the listings.

And so it came to pass that the new BBC fantasy TV series, Merlin, garnered such a review.

Quite rightly.

The writer, in his interview, was very clear that they were not simply jumping on the Harry Potter bandwagon... but also mentioned Smallville as an inspiration. The truth of the latter is obvious.

It's competently done, but if it carries on recycling folks from Doctor Who and Torchwood (Eve Myles in the first episode, taking two roles) and insulting the ear with wooden dialogue ("There's something about you, Merlin... I can't quite put my finger on it"), it's going to be scraping the standard of the later seasons of Smallville without ever reaching the quality of the early seasons.

The odd thing is that the dialogue was very good (if a little predictable) in places... but where there was a critical moment, it faltered and came out lowest-common-denominator, trite and unimaginitive.

Still, early days.

Where it first lost me was in its presentation of Camelot. The French castle they chose is very clearly not English. We didn't make anything that ornate, so it's far too fine to work as Arthur's (or Uther's) Camelot. Nice castle, just not very believable.

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