Atlantis: Stealth Spin-off?
In which I show all the self-restraint of Merlin in a neckerchief shop and commit myself to another however many years of being taken for granted by a bunch of talentless hacks.
Honestly, I held off as long as I could. I promised myself I wouldn't subject myself to another however many years of these morons' attempts at show-writing, but really, how long could I resist a show based on Greek mythology starring Sarah Parish and Juliet Stevenson? Frankly, I'm proud of resisting for four whole episodes. (Shut up.) (Plus, Howard Overman's a showrunner here, and while I never thought his Merlin episodes were any better or worse than the rest, I do enjoy Misfits.)
Make no mistake, though, this is Merlin in all but name. Even the credits are in the same font, and it's the same people's names popping up under the writing and directing credits. (The title sequence is distractingly similar too, although it now has sharks!) Our character equivalents are all here, although they're mixed around enough to give it a slightly different feel. The sets are similar, and many of the locations, of course, are identical. There's the jaunty "fun-times!" music accompanied by groan-worthy humour. If it weren't literally unthinkable, I'd hardly be surprised to see Arthur and Merlin show up, revealing this to be the long-rumoured spin-off series.
It's not grabbed me as Merlin had at this point, for which I'm quite glad because I really don't want to become as invested in this show as I was in that one. I know there is disappointment ahead, here. But at the same time, given what I know about these people's veneration of the status quo, I kind of feel that this show has the potential to be more sustainable in the long run.
See, the thing we all loved about Merlin wasn't Arthur and Merlin's friendship, not really - it was the potential for what that friendship could be. After all, Arthur and Merlin were never really friends - they couldn't be, not with such fundamental inequality on both sides. With our (once again depressingly masculine) trio here, there are no such problems. Jason, Pythagoras and Hercules are all of equal social status, Jason's secret is not actually endangering anyone, and already, while they're not quite filling me with the feels Merlin and Arthur did, their relationship feels more grounded and much, much more genuine. Mark Addy aside, the instant charm that Bradley James and especially Colin Morgan brought to their roles isn't here, but Jack Donnelly and Robert Emms aren't bad, and there's time to grow, although they do seem to have slotted into this new situation with rather puzzling ease - Jason is supposedly a 21st century boy, but he fits into this new world as though he'd never been anywhere else. It is nice, though, that he's able to inject some modern sensibilities into those ancient Greek practices that get past the Saturday-night goggles. There is potential here. (Although we're straight into the slashbait again, and while I nodded along with it in Merlin, I'm only going to be waving it through here if we actually meet a gay character at some point. Otherwise, it's obnoxious.)
There is a downside to this - at this point we know a lot less about Atlantis's royal family than we did about the Pendragons at this point in Merlin's run. Sarah Parish has fun as Pasiphae, but we don't know her motivations or anything much about her except that she's eeeeeeevil. King Minos (a wasted Alexander Siddig, not credited as a regular so probably not long for this world) is so far a total blank slate, and Ariadne (Aiysha Hart, also not a regular for whatever reason), who here has Morgana's role of decrying the barbarities of the regime, is likewise a mystery. And frankly, I'm not terribly interested in them as characters, nor am I entirely seeing why I should be. I don't find them essential to this show's rhythm as the Pendragons were, and I'd be quite happy spending time with the "lower" circles.
The treatment of women, on the other hand, is once again a bit shaky. Pasiphae's not the real problem - I'm more concerned about the marginalisation of Medusa (essentially Gwen, but with Morgana's dark future) and Ariadne (vice versa), who have had very little to do so far. This happened far too often in Merlin, and it looks like it'll be happening far too often here.
Juliet Stevenson, whose Oracle is here performing the Kilgharrah role, does an awful lot with very little, and she's probably the character I'm most intrigued by at the moment. It seems to me that she's probably Jason's mother, but that remains to be seen. She's already shown a lot more genuine concern for Jason than Kilgharrah ever did for Merlin. There is a lot of talk about destiny and such like, which, you know, I'm ignoring as far as possible. It's got to stay secret for some hand-wavingly tenuous reason, and I'm sure it will become absolutely infuriating later on, but at the moment it's far enough in the background to be safely disregarded.
(By the way, I saw one of the producers saying somewhere that "this is Merlin series five tone, not series one", which is an incredibly bald-faced lie. This is all straight out of the series one playbook.)
Atlantis isn't an awful show, but it's certainly not a great one either. I'll probably keep watching, but I can't imagine myself posting about it often. If nothing else, it has the usual rotating pool of excellent British talent playing around in a pastiche of Greek mythology, and that's enough to keep me entertained.
Honestly, I held off as long as I could. I promised myself I wouldn't subject myself to another however many years of these morons' attempts at show-writing, but really, how long could I resist a show based on Greek mythology starring Sarah Parish and Juliet Stevenson? Frankly, I'm proud of resisting for four whole episodes. (Shut up.) (Plus, Howard Overman's a showrunner here, and while I never thought his Merlin episodes were any better or worse than the rest, I do enjoy Misfits.)
Make no mistake, though, this is Merlin in all but name. Even the credits are in the same font, and it's the same people's names popping up under the writing and directing credits. (The title sequence is distractingly similar too, although it now has sharks!) Our character equivalents are all here, although they're mixed around enough to give it a slightly different feel. The sets are similar, and many of the locations, of course, are identical. There's the jaunty "fun-times!" music accompanied by groan-worthy humour. If it weren't literally unthinkable, I'd hardly be surprised to see Arthur and Merlin show up, revealing this to be the long-rumoured spin-off series.
It's not grabbed me as Merlin had at this point, for which I'm quite glad because I really don't want to become as invested in this show as I was in that one. I know there is disappointment ahead, here. But at the same time, given what I know about these people's veneration of the status quo, I kind of feel that this show has the potential to be more sustainable in the long run.
See, the thing we all loved about Merlin wasn't Arthur and Merlin's friendship, not really - it was the potential for what that friendship could be. After all, Arthur and Merlin were never really friends - they couldn't be, not with such fundamental inequality on both sides. With our (once again depressingly masculine) trio here, there are no such problems. Jason, Pythagoras and Hercules are all of equal social status, Jason's secret is not actually endangering anyone, and already, while they're not quite filling me with the feels Merlin and Arthur did, their relationship feels more grounded and much, much more genuine. Mark Addy aside, the instant charm that Bradley James and especially Colin Morgan brought to their roles isn't here, but Jack Donnelly and Robert Emms aren't bad, and there's time to grow, although they do seem to have slotted into this new situation with rather puzzling ease - Jason is supposedly a 21st century boy, but he fits into this new world as though he'd never been anywhere else. It is nice, though, that he's able to inject some modern sensibilities into those ancient Greek practices that get past the Saturday-night goggles. There is potential here. (Although we're straight into the slashbait again, and while I nodded along with it in Merlin, I'm only going to be waving it through here if we actually meet a gay character at some point. Otherwise, it's obnoxious.)
There is a downside to this - at this point we know a lot less about Atlantis's royal family than we did about the Pendragons at this point in Merlin's run. Sarah Parish has fun as Pasiphae, but we don't know her motivations or anything much about her except that she's eeeeeeevil. King Minos (a wasted Alexander Siddig, not credited as a regular so probably not long for this world) is so far a total blank slate, and Ariadne (Aiysha Hart, also not a regular for whatever reason), who here has Morgana's role of decrying the barbarities of the regime, is likewise a mystery. And frankly, I'm not terribly interested in them as characters, nor am I entirely seeing why I should be. I don't find them essential to this show's rhythm as the Pendragons were, and I'd be quite happy spending time with the "lower" circles.
The treatment of women, on the other hand, is once again a bit shaky. Pasiphae's not the real problem - I'm more concerned about the marginalisation of Medusa (essentially Gwen, but with Morgana's dark future) and Ariadne (vice versa), who have had very little to do so far. This happened far too often in Merlin, and it looks like it'll be happening far too often here.
Juliet Stevenson, whose Oracle is here performing the Kilgharrah role, does an awful lot with very little, and she's probably the character I'm most intrigued by at the moment. It seems to me that she's probably Jason's mother, but that remains to be seen. She's already shown a lot more genuine concern for Jason than Kilgharrah ever did for Merlin. There is a lot of talk about destiny and such like, which, you know, I'm ignoring as far as possible. It's got to stay secret for some hand-wavingly tenuous reason, and I'm sure it will become absolutely infuriating later on, but at the moment it's far enough in the background to be safely disregarded.
(By the way, I saw one of the producers saying somewhere that "this is Merlin series five tone, not series one", which is an incredibly bald-faced lie. This is all straight out of the series one playbook.)
Atlantis isn't an awful show, but it's certainly not a great one either. I'll probably keep watching, but I can't imagine myself posting about it often. If nothing else, it has the usual rotating pool of excellent British talent playing around in a pastiche of Greek mythology, and that's enough to keep me entertained.