In Short There's Simply Not...

... a more frustrating King Arthur interpretation than Starz' short-lived Camelot series.

I see that the series has been cancelled after its first season, and I completely understand why it failed to thrive. The show butchered the Camelot legend, transforming Arthur into an ignoble king responsible for the flaws that would ultimately lead to his kingdom's downfall. Morgan becomes the true necromancer of the series, while Merlin is for the most part a charlatan and buffoon with only the slightest skill in magic.

While the series had two superlative cast members--Joseph Fiennes as Merlin and Eva Green as Morgan--the rest of the casting was far, far less impressive. Jamie Campbell Bower was wholly unsatisfying as Arthur; he was awkward, wooden, unheroic, and uninspiring as the king who would become England's inspiration. For the most part, he would have been more suited for a dinner theater version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Fiennes, though, was brilliant, pulling every nuance out of Merlin's character. I admit that he showed all the subtlety of William Shatner in his portrayal... but the brashness was a part of Merlin's nature, and it fit in perfectly. Green was for the most part captivating as Morgan--alternating between regal and conniving as the role demanded. And she was far more entrancing on screen than was Tamsin Egerton as Guenevere--a bad bit of casting when Guenevere's Helen-esque beauty is supposed to be the cause of Camelot's downfall. Green's only distracting screen moments come when she is at her most machiavellian, at which point her voice drops to a coarse, nuanced growl that sounds amusingly like Fringe star Anna Torv doing her Leonard Nimoy impression.

I watched the entire series, because I'm an Arthur devotee... but I have to confess that at times I found myself hitting the fast-forward button a couple of times to get through some of the series all-too-frequent moments of tedium. Alas, it didn't help that much...

Let's hope that, after a few years passes, someone will realize that there is still a good Arthur story to be told in television series form... but neither Merlin nor Camelot have succeeded...