What I've Been Watching, Arthurian edition: Starz's Camelot
In February of 2011, just a few months before HBO would premier their dark fantasy drama series Game of Thrones, the Starz network premiered a similar show - a quisi-historical dark fantasy reinterpretation of the Arthur legend, with the simple title of Camelot.
The series, unlike several of the other takes on the story of King Arthur, is at least somewhat faithful to the source material, hitting many of the more well-known bits of Arthurian lore, but also tended to put its own spin on them: Morgan is one of Arthur’s principle enemies, but is Uther’s daughter, not Igraine’s; Arthur does pull a sword from a stone to prove his legitimacy as king, but it’s the Sword of Mars, and he never wields it; Arthur and Guinevere are in a love triangle, but the third member is Guinevere’s husband Leontes.
The darkest of these twists is probably the origin of Excalibur: the sword does come from a girl in a lake, but she was on the lake because Merlin was chasing her to get the sword. Merlin uses his powers to freeze the lake; the girl falls into the water, and ends up trapped under the ice. She uses the sword to break through, but ends up drowning anyway.
Yeah, this series can get pretty dark.
I’ll be honest - this is one of my favorite retellings of the Arthur story. The characters and their conflicting motivations are great. Arthur, Merlin, and the other protagonists want to “make a better world”, but have to face the difficulties inherent in attempting such a thing, from hostile foreign powers to their own subjects reluctance for change. Morgan, our antagonist, wants what she sees as her birthright, namely Uther’s throne, and is willing to do just about anything to get it.
A great example of how both parties deal with similar situations can be seen in the episode “Justice” (ep. 5). Arthur and co. are faced with determining a murderer’s motivation, as a means of demonstrating how Camelot is different, and arguably better than what the people have known. Meanwhile, Morgan is building a power base with the merchants and town leaders, manipulating them into believing that only she can protect them from the dangerous forces infesting the land, namely by one of her allies framing a mercenary for attacking her. The big difference here is in how both sides carry out their justice - Arthur carries out a trial with a jury, while Morgan just throws the ‘guilty’ man to the mob.
My favorite character in the series is Merlin, played by Joseph Fiennes. He’s mysterious, but obviously has a dark past, and is cryptic as hell. Prime example - Igraine points out that he seemingly hasn’t aged since he took baby Arthur from her, about twenty years ago. She asks him how that’s possible. Merlin’s answer? “It’s not.”
I love it.
Plus, there’s the fact that, unlike the Merlin in King Arthur or A Dream of Eagles, he actually has magical powers, but unlike in Merlin, he has a great reason not to use them - 1) they’re dangerously addictive, and 2) they extract a toll on his body, and could kill him if he isn’t careful. That’s a much better reason than ‘it’s illegal’, especially given how often BBC’s Merlin uses magic.
But I also liked Eva Green as Morgan. Her goals are understandable, and she’s willing to try just about anything to achieve them, from allying with one of her father’s old enemies to making deals with possibly demonic entities. She also understands how to properly scheme and play at politics. This is what Cersei Lannister should be like.
The first season covered everything from Uther’s death and Arthur’s coronation to the Battle of Bardon Pass (presumably based on Mount Badon) and the conception of Mordred. The Round Table was just being devised, and Merlin decided that it was time for him to leave Camelot.
Sadly, that’s all anyone’s likely to see of this story. At the end of June 2011, just weeks after the season finale aired, Starz decided not to renew the series for another season. I don’t know the details behind this decision, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the people in charge at Starz got a bit shaky over potentially competing with HBO’s Game of Thrones. So Camelot has been relegated to the pile of ‘what could have been’ programs. But at least we got ten reasonably good episodes out of it.