Why Merlin Works

(written after the end of the second season)

    My husband, swayed by his love of the BBC series “Merlin” (the first season of which just closed on NBC), recently made the mistake of renting the Sam Neil “Merlin” from the 1980's.  I made it only two thirds of the way through that morass of a miniseries before it became unbearable, but it did drive home the brilliance of the new "Merlin" as reimagined by the BBC.  The problem with the 1980's “Merlin” is that it was about the Arthurian legends--all them, actually, one dreary event after the other.  The best Arthurian literature has always been about something else. 
    T.H. White's “The Once and Future King,” the first introduction to the Arthurian legends for many of us, is of course about good government versus bad.  Thanks to Merlin's magic, the young Arthur visits feudal fish, fascist ants, pacifist geese, and other political animals, and then tries to apply these lessons to Camelot.  The questions raised by these magical journeys were vital, necessary questions for those like White who saw the rise of the Nazis and lived through World War II .  In contrast, Malory's “Le Morte D'Arthur,” the source of much of White's plot, is about the problems of the dying chivalric code of the 1400's, while the twelfth century works of Chretien de Troyes (one of Malory's sources), are primarily concerned with the nature of courtly love.  The point is, all of these seminal works use the story of Camelot to comment on their own times. 
    The new, twenty-first century “Merlin” is about the ideal of tolerance and the horror of terrorism, and all the gray areas created when they collide.  The reigning king, Uther, is a tyrant who fears and hates magic; Merlin is a member of a persecuted minority.  The “nice” characters--Morgana, Gwen, Merlin, and increasingly, Arthur--suspect Uther of being a bloodthirsty fanatic. He is, after all, willing to kill children in his zeal to wipe out magic.  Clearly Merlin is a good guy, and Uther would be wrong to kill him.  Yet most of the witches who attack Camelot are terrorists, willing to poison an entire city of innocents as revenge against the king.  Is Uther evil?  Does he deserve to die?  Do we really think every man, woman, and child killed by our bombs was a member of Al Queda?  Has fighting terrorism made *us* fanatics?
    You see my point.
    I don't want to suggest to any of you who haven't seen the show that BBC's “Merlin” is some sort of dry philosophical treatise.  On the contrary, “Merlin” is full of sword fights and CGI monsters, snappy dialogue (especially when Merlin and Arthur squabble), and loads of that who-likes-who unresolved sexual tension that makes for such good TV. It's well-acted, and watching  it is a light, fun adventure.
    Like all the best Arthurian retellings, “Merlin” manages to do *both* at the same time: to be escapist and allegorical, exciting and profound.   That's why I love it.  That's why it works.