So I watched the first two episodes of "Merlin" last night when they were on NBC and I'm less than impressed with it. The acting is good, I'll give it that, but aside from that, I have a lot of problems with it. The main one being that it completely deviates from Arthurian legend and in doing so dumbs the story down and almost ruins it. First off, I hate the fact that Merlin is shown as being an 18 year old boy, and as being the same age as Arthur. That's bull-shite. When Arthur met Merlin, Merlin was an already very old and very well-respected sorcerer. Second off, Arthur was a very respectful, intelligent young man. Not the complete jackass that they show him to be. One of the main reasons people cared for and liked Arthur so much was that he was so nice and he cared about the people of Camelot.
Another thing, Guinevere was NOT the daughter of a blacksmith, nor was she ever Morgan Le Fey's (nee Morgana's) servant. Guinevere was of noble birth. Also, in the show Guinevere shows obvious dislike toward Arthur which is also completely untrue according to Arthurian legend where she always respected and liked Arthur, in the show Arthur never once looks at her, which is also completely wrong as Arthur was completely smitten with Guinevere from the first time he saw her. Now, mostly I don't have a problem with traditional characters having a different hair color than their original form, but in this case, I tend to have a small problem. In the show Gwen (though the actress is beautiful) has olive colored skin and very dark, curly hair. When the original legend took place, Gwen would NEVER have been considered to be a beautiful woman, perhaps unconventionally pretty, but never beautiful. Back then very pale women with blonde hair were considered to be the most gorgeous. Now in the show, I suppose it works because Arthur HASN'T looked at Gwen (at least not yet) twice, but as I said before, that is a complete deviation from the original legends.
As I said before, Merlin was NOT the same age as Arthur...he was much older. He was a well established and well respected sorcerer in many stories (though in others he was shown to be evil, but I tend to lean more toward the good sorcerer that helps Arthur.)
Morgan Le Fay, nee Morgana is not Uther's ward, she is Arthur's half-sister, which of course makes the whole sexual tension thing going on in the show a bit creepy (eeww, incest for the lose) though I am glad that they are showing that Morgana has an interest in witchcraft.
They haven't shown much of anything in the way of Uther as of yet, but so far his is the only depiction that seems to match up with that of the original legend. I would prefer it if they talked about how he used magic (with the help of Merlin no less) to seduce Igraine (Arthur and Morgana's mother) away from her husband so that she would give birth to Arthur.
But yeah, I think that the tv show is ruining everything that I love about the Arthurian legend. I have no problem with some deviation from original legends, to be honest, I'm quite fond of "The Mists of Avalon" but that's because they do a good job of keeping true to original legends while also expanding upon them and changing a few circumstances. So there you go.
♥ Meg
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