Except in the BBC’s Merlin, he and Arthur are the same age, presumably because their target audience is young adults and they find old people ‘boring’. For those expecting someone older they’re thrown Richard Wilson still desperately trying to cast off the ghost of Victor Meldrew as King Uther’s Court Physician, and the wise old fart in these proceedings. If you’re just gone ‘what Dragon?’ Then join the party, because I don’t recall there ever being dragons in Arthur’s story, but there is one now! Hey BBC, can we have some Trolls and Orcs in there too please? Or even the Cyclops if you’re mixing your mythologies. It’s like someone in BBC Drama wrote ‘Merlin’, ‘Arthur’ and ‘Medieval Costumes’ at the top of an sheet of paper and then said ‘job done’, no need to fuss with the details. Therefore it’s easy to think that this is yet another excuse for the BBC to leverage its copious costume department, and while there is truth in that, we should perhaps rejoice that it’s not another rehash of one of Dickens’, Bronte’s or Jane Austen’s works for the twentieth or more time. It’s a personal fantasy of mine that someone radical will head the organisation at some point and put a veto on all costume dramas that they’ve previously done, because I’ve seen more Taffeta, Crinoline, Bustles, Bonnets and Mr Darcys than you could reasonably fit in an Airbus 380. But I digress. The characters range from being acceptable to gammon exponents. In terms of an overall style the only consistency is that it’s uneven and often very stilted. With so many characters to introduce, some got just a line or two, while others only required for the story get pages of dialogue. One of these is Eve Myles (Gwen in Torchwood) playing a hag intent on revenge for the death of his son for practicing witchcraft. After we and Merlin meet Arthur, we’d have been happy if she’d succeeded in killing him, but disappointingly Merlin saves him. The entire build up to this event is bizarre at times, because it’s like they couldn’t decide if this was mythology or a fairytale. Parallels are draw with Snow White, like that’s meant to be relevant somehow. Others scenes are supposedly comic, accompanied with some of the campest incidental music that could have been borrowed from a Carry-On movie. This hints at the mishmash that is Merlin, it’s all over the place. One minute it’s legend, then slapstick, then panto, then drama, horror and then mystery – they missed out the science fiction and western genres, but we’ve another 12 episodes of this for that to be rectified. What grinded from the outset here is that none of the script had been read for ‘sense’, as in making any. One of the first scenes we’re presented is Merlin enters the CGI castle looking for Gaius (Richard Wilson). He encounters two guards either side of a door and tells them he’s looking for Gaius. They point inside and he goes without them asking who he is or what he wants with Gaius. So what was it they were guarding then, that they let anyone through who knows the name of someone in the castle but they’ve no idea who they are? Did nobody in scripting mention how stupid this seems? No, well Merlin was full of such obvious gaffs along with all the other glaring flaws. Overall this wasn’t the start I’d hoped for. They’ve gone so far away from the mythology that I’m not sure what this is supposed to be But it’s not just me who’s confused, clearly the idea of how it’s presented hasn’t crystallised with the writers, it’s got multiple personalities none of which are especially attractive.Colin Morgan seems a genuinely talented actor, who’ll do well, once people have forgotten Merlin, I’m sure. You can find out more on Merlin, incidentally, at www.bbc.co.uk/merlin.