Camelot

[CCCC]

Just wondered whether anyone had seen this new show on Starz?

It's written by Chris Chibnall (of Torchwood, who had some early involvement in Merlin) and is supposed to be a more adult telling of the legend. And it definitely is (you meet Arthur when he's at in the woodland with a girl, and within the first half hour you have Eva Green as Morgan is erm, cementing an alliance), so far it's looked rather like Merlin crossed with Spartacus (not necessarily a bad thing) although not been quite as much sheer fun as Spartacus was for me. But still very watchable.

The cast, of whom I suspect you'll be getting a very good view of most of them over the course of show.

Joseph Fiennes as Merlin
Jamie Campbell Bower as King Arthur
Tamsin Egerton as Guinevere
Claire Forlani as Igraine
Peter Mooney as Kay
Philip Winchester as Leontes
Eva Green as Morgan
Clive Standen as Gawain
Jesse Spencer as King Hem
James Purefoy as King Lot
Diarmaid Murtagh as Brastias
Sebastian Spence as Sir Lucan
Tyler Kennington as Albion
Jamie Downey as Ulfius
Lara Jean Chorostecki as Bridget
Daragh O'Malley as Leodegrance
Sean Pertwee as Sir Ector
Colin Maher as the Duke of Cornwall



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot_(TV_series)

[The Dark Passenger]

I've only seen the first episode so far. It was pretty good. The best thing about it so far is easily Eva Green; a stunning actress, and I don't just mean in the looks department. Try to keep your eyes off her - you can't!

[vonbloodbath]

I've only seen the first episode too, and I found it to be very mediocre. It's a shame, as I love the cast, but the whole thing was just lacking a certain something. For me the standout was Purefoy as Lot, though Green was good too. Fiennes was a charisma vacuum again - it's like a flash back to Flash Forward - and Arthur was instantly forgettable. There were few risible or groan inducing moments, but equally there were no real memorable scenes. It just felt lacklustre, which is odd, given the calibre of the cast and the presumed cost.

I may watch the other episodes, but probably not.

[Mr Cairo]

Watched the first Camelot and the Borgias i am preferring the Borgias although neither are anywhere near as good as Rome

[CCCC]

Now seen the second episode and well, hmm. It's a little puzzling really, seems to be less than the sum of its parts somehow if you know what I mean. The pieces are all these, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong but...

[emceehamster]

Just watched Ep 1 and it's very good. Joseph Fiennes' weirdy Merlin is a nice touch.

[ceribethlem]

When does it start on Channel 4?

[Skip]

Turned it off after 15 minutes. With the cast and locations it looks english, but for me the story was just too obviously for an American youth market.

[johnone]

I rarely review tv shows...( I accidentally started the Spartacus thread) but Camelot starts tonight on Channel 4 and it just finished it's run here on Irish Television so I thought I'd give a quick spoiler free look at the first series.

As I'm sure some of you know from my awards thread I like to point out the madness each year of the Irish Film and television awards....well for the last few years the big winner each year has been the Tudors which has Irish production money and was filmed In Ireland...well as we all know the Tudors finished up last year and this caused a bit of a panic...what other American tv series was going to come in to employ all those who worked on The Tudors in Wicklow?....first it looked like the Borgias ..(produced by Neil Jordan and starring Jeremy Irons ) but it was decided to film that in Romania....Game Of Thrones went to Belfast ...Morgan O Sullivan (Irish Producer of The Tuodrs) has secured a Major Deal to film a history of the Vikings starting later this year but until then we get Camelot....( Written and created by Torchwoods Chris Chibnall) Camelot which just like a white knight seemed to come riding to the rescue of the Irish television industry in Wicklow....unfortunately Camelot makes the Tudors Look like Shakespeare!

First the good news the Series looks fantastic...presenting a wind swept and blasted Britain of the early dark ages ( so it should as the makers have chosen some of the same locations as John Boormans Excalibur) and the two main stars Joseph Fiennes (Merlin) and Eva Green (Morgan (le Fay) Pendragon) truly hold the screen whenever they are on it....their prescence constantly driving the story forward......the story truly is theirs with Morgan hungering for the throne she believes is rightfully hers and Merlin trying to make the throne of Britain stand for something more than just power and terror.......unfortunately the problems are with the rest of the series and the blame for that must rest fully with showrunner Chris Chibnall.

You see Chibnall comes from the era of Torchwood that divided the fans....the era that gave us the charming term "F**k buddies" and unfortunatley it appears to be more of the same .....Jamie Campbell Bower is an incredibly weak King Arthur.....at the start he appears as a boy unready to take the crown ....unfortunately he never changes ...never really maturing as a character through the entire series...and as for his love for Guinevere well it's incredibly wet,,,in the style of a soft porn Timotei ad from the late 90's(If timotei had done soft porn but that's a different manner) not once do we feel the love that would eventually ruin the dream of Camelot instead we get a love affair that would seem to be better suited to Grange Hill!
And as for the plot....well it's a hard slog...somehow Chibnall has taken one of the greatest legends and somehow...well just like Arthur and Guinevere made it quite ordinary with leaps of logic that defy story telling ....In episode one there is an attempt to somehow misguide the audience that there is no such thing as magic....that it is all slight of hand...that would be fine except for the fact that in the first five minutes of the pre credit sequence of episode one we see an incredible moment of magic taking place right in front of us....so we know there's magic, why spend the rest of the episode trying to deny it?........In episode one a character is reported dead only to turn up in episode two with little or no explanation to how they escaped ...because they are needed to move the story forward no other reason......each week this happens ...characters act against their nature merely so the story can move forward (this leads to a laughable moment in the finale where we actually get an A team type montage of preparing for battle..I swear all we needed was the A team music) and let us not go into the dialog which true to a Chibnall screenplay drops the f bomb quite a lot for the sake of being "Daring" and the logic of age where Arthurs mother questions to ask why Merlin hasn't aged and yet does not ask how can she be so young to be Arthurs Mother ( she would have to have been ten by the logic of casting!)
The show also suffers for budget . it looks fantastic it truly does but it does stretch credulity when Arthur rides out at the head of his army.....all eight of them??!?!?!? especially when bad guys see Arthurs army of eight and start screaming "Run Away...Run Away!" and the fact that there appears to be only one tavern in the entire kingdom , ( I swear by episode seven you have to ask how thick is the land lady when she doesn't recognise the king ...a king who rode by with his army the week before?!?!?)
There is one exception and that is episode four "The Lady of the lake" which shows the potential the show had with explanation of how excalibur and the legend of the lady of the lake came to be......sadly the show appears to almost immediately fudge it with the following episode.
Overall a deeply average show that has one or two standout moments that somehow makes Monty Pythons version with kings being recognised because they are not covered in Sh*t more historically accurate.But if this recieves awards at next years iftas ...well it will make the awards more laughable than usual.

Hope you enjoy it more than I did.

[roddersj04]

I don't know, you originally had a disdain for Spartacus, and i'm pretty sure you said you liked it after gods of the arena aired. Who knows, this may get better