Netflix’s Cursed has a killer premise—what if the Lady of the Lake wielded Excalibur?—that it fails to live up to, not least because its teenage Fey sorceress-turned-warrior Nimue (Katherine Langford) is not actually the Lady of the Lake. Not yet—in fact, the opening title card on the television adaptation of Frank Miller and Tom Wheeler’s graphic novel teases that before the Sword of Power chose a King, it chose a Queen, telling viewers all they need to know: This is a prequel that will seek to set itself apart from the tradition of Arthurian legend (except for where it benefits it to namedrop your fantasy faves) to the point where it should just have been its own original fantasy series. Yet it will eventually give way to the familiar story, so that it won’t matter if a Queen wielded Excalibur first, because it will still end up with its King.
The once and future legend actually suffers more for this attempt to retcon its prologue, because in endeavoring to stand apart, it recasts all the Arthurian archetypes in the same tired narrative we’ve seen of late: Special girl is gifted with magical weapon that only she can wield (because reasons), surrounded by a cast of supporting characters who all must follow her (because plot), some of which are disposable and others who will become enemies (because there needs to be a second season). Most bow to her cause and many die bloodily at her blade, and it does nothing to change her character nor her supposed destiny. The series’ will-they/won’t-they couple finally consummate their relationship the night before a big sacrifice. A bunch of characters get retroactively renamed in the final minutes. At this point, I could be describing any number of fantasy sagas instead of the unique origin story that Nimue deserved.
At the start of Cursed, “the age of man is upon us”—us being the Fey, a magical race of people who seem to range from the winged Hidden to humanoids with horns and antlers to people who look “normal,” so long as they don’t get upset and allow their green veins (and control over the forest) to come to the surface. Within their own villages, the Fey seem to exist in relative peace, performing everyday folk magic and occasional ceremonies coinciding with an eclipse. But they live in fear of the Red Paladins, sent by the Church (yep, the one in Rome) to wipe out these supposed ungodly creatures for no reason other than not liking the way they look (although the fact that plenty of them can pass as human doesn’t help their case).
The encroaching race of “man” includes Uther Pendragon (Sebastian Armesto), the current king who doesn’t have the best handle on his realm: A drought has lowered morale, and his advisor Merlin (Gustaf Skarsgård) has mysteriously lost his magic, so lately he’s been acting more like Uther’s drunk court magician and resident mad scientist. But an auspicious vision alerts Merlin to the fact that a certain mythical sword and a certain ordinary girl are about to cross paths.
Too bad she’s (cue the title card)…CURSED.
Even among her own marginalized people, Nimue is a pariah, thanks to a childhood encounter with dark spirits that has left her with a nasty set of scars that seem to have marked her as their own. She suffers epileptic visions, or more accurately, the same single montage-vision over and over that includes an image of her, riddled with arrows, slipping beneath the surface of the water. This isn’t a spoiler—it appears in the first few minutes—and seems an ever-present reminder that no matter how much time Nimue spends on land wielding the Sword of Power and eventually acting as the Fey’s self-appointed Queen, the water will inevitably claim her.
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In an effort to build on the Arthurian canon’s limited depiction of Nimue, Wheeler and Miller—and their writers’ room, which includes more than a few women—give her too much to juggle. She’s a Fey but doesn’t want to be a Summoner like her priestess mother Lenore (Catherine Walker). She’s cursed but also, for mysterious reasons, Excalibur’s favorite person. The blade, which is better known by its Fey moniker the Devil’s Tooth, or the more agnostic Sword of Power, turns her into Action Girl and earns Nimue the nickname of the Wolf-Blood Witch, as she stumbles her way through the realm trying to figure out her destiny. She eventually appoints herself Queen of the Fey, leading what amounts to a sometimes fight/sometimes flight in the name of freedom. So much happens to her, and she occasionally tries to make actual decisions, but one gets the sense that even those are out of her control.
Where Cursed tries to put a fresh spin on Nimue’s story (but only further demonstrates her lack of agency) is by recontextualizing her relationships to every man, woman, and object she encounters. Merlin, normally her lover in these retellings, has decidedly non-romantic significance to her journey. Instead, charming biracial mercenary Arthur (Devon Terrell) takes on the mantle of love interest and potential rival for the Sword of Power. Nimue also draws Arthur’s sister Morgan (Shalom Brune-Franklin) out of her abbey and into the Fey’s cause, though they clash over the best use of the sword and over magic in general. Then there’s the sword itself, which is not so much bequeathed to Nimue as she is designated its temporary carrier. Though it passes through a number of hands, including Arthur’s and Merlin’s, the sword is fickle about who its ogham script will light up for. (While I didn’t pause to translate the inscription, I’m assuming it didn’t say “The ale has killed me.”)
Like the sword, I just couldn’t form an emotional attachment to anyone in this series, mostly because it didn’t feel much like Arthurian legend at all.
The problem is, the original source material and its many adaptations are wonderfully soapy. The Pendragon line is dynastic drama at its most self-indulgent, starting with a king who disguises himself as another man to bed that man’s wife—conceiving Arthur, who in turn winds up sleeping with his half-sister Morgan and landing in a love triangle that sees him either cuckolded or (depending on your adaptation) part of a threesome with Lancelot and Guinevere. Then Arthur’s incestuous son Mordred comes back to kill dear old dad… That’s how you do tragic destiny.
The best Arthurian reinterpretations maintain at least some of this over-the-top familial spectacle, but Cursed centers on a bunch of teenagers taking themselves and all this talk of destiny way too seriously. It’s downright exhausting, especially when you try to keep track of all of the extra antagonists and foreign cultures Cursed brings in, which add up to simply too many moving parts and confusing allegiances. The Red Paladins are terrifying in their fanaticism all on their own, but then they have to have a secret weapon: the Weeping Monk (Daniel Sharman), who is supposed to conjure nightmares, but whose black tears just make him look like an emo warrior. The Paladins’ tensions with Uther would have been enough conflict for the humans, but then the show throws in the Viking kingdom whose ice king Cumber might have a more legitimate claim to the throne than Uther, as well as the Viking outcasts, led by a badass pirate queen, who raid whoever’s coffers are fullest that day. The Leper King also wants the Sword of Power, for his own reasons related to clawing his way out of the underworld. Not to mention a random tattooed assassin who wanders around singing and offing minor characters for plot-furthering reasons.
One point in Cursed’s favor is that it boasts an impressively deep bench of women, none of whom have to die for Nimue’s character development. (Well, except for her mom Lenore. There always has to be one.) Over the course of ten episodes, various young women get to explore paths outside of their intended station, whether it’s Nimue’s childhood friend Pym (Lily Newmark) faking it until she makes it as a healer aboard a Viking vessel, or Morgan’s fellow dedicate Sister Iris (Emily Coates) doing her best Arya Stark impression by stabbing and burning everyone who’s on the wrong side of her faith. Pym’s boss, the badass Viking captain known only as the Red Spear (Bella Dayne), has too few scenes but will likely emerge as a fan favorite even in such a short time onscreen. And after a couple of episodes of treading water, plotwise, Morgan gets a renewed purpose in studying dark magic, especially that which can bring back the dead.
It is worth noting that Morgan suffers as the surviving half of a Bury Your Gays trope, though her dabbling in death might mean that her beloved, Sister Celia (Sophie Harkness), could return next season (if there is a next season). This bit of character trauma is indicative of the one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of storytelling in which Cursed deals: Having a queer Morgan le Fey is a wonderful spin on a character so often defined by her incestuous relationship to her brother, and gives me hope that we might sidestep her stomach-turning union with Arthur down the road. Yet the series’ one queer couple has to be separated by tragedy.
Similarly, the show’s queer Black Morgan and her Black brother Arthur offer an awesome iteration of these famous figures, yet they spend most of the season being ordered around by a magical white girl. Even more baffling is that, as author L.L. McKinney pointed out on Twitter, the Nimue in Cursed the graphic novel does not look white. If the two projects were being developed at basically the same time, it’s galling to think that on the page this pivotal figure could be a woman of color, but that that interpretation still does not translate to the screen.
Speaking of translation, even despite the presence of women in the writers’ room, this story was still spearheaded by two men. Author Margaret Owen made the keen observation via Twitter that this demonstrates the point of larger discussions around the idea that when women propose such ideas, it’s treated as self-insert fanfic, whereas when men pitch it, the story is clearly validated. The fact that Cursed has a healthy roster of female characters feels like a small consolation in the face of this enduring issue.
There’s a huge missed opportunity here in that it’s not really Nimue who’s cursed, but the sword itself. Just as she becomes the stereotype of the inspiring warrior, the Sword of Power becomes the requisite weapon that threatens to destroy anyone who spends too much time wielding it, or who picks it up for the wrong reasons. This is explored rather shallowly in Nimue and Merlin’s conversations, and could actually provide a valid reason why Arthur will eventually earn the record of longest ownership, yet the series never quite gets there.
Instead, after devoting so much time and energy to its conflicts between the Paladins and the Fey (and the Vikings/Tusks and Lepers and Hidden and whoever else got dragged in), Cursed’s finale resorts to revealing the true names of all of its major players so that viewers can fill in the blanks about how the rest of their stories will unfold. Not that you should waste your time watching it, but I’ll put spoilers in white text just in case: Annoying Fey pipsqueak Squirrel (Billy Jenkins) is revealed to be Percival; the Weeping Monk, who rescues him, is actually Lancelot (because of course he is). And while they don’t say it in the show, the Cursed graphic novel reveals that the Red Spear, who got to meet Arthur in the final battle after a we-saved-each-other’s-lives meet-cute, is actually Guinevere. (I don’t know which I groaned harder at, the Lancelot reveal or the fact that Red Spear rhymes with Guinevere.)
This kind of reveal rarely works because it relies more on the dramatic irony of recognizing these names than on any actual character development on the screen. Maybe a potential second season will better embrace the tragic drama of Arthurian legend, but based on the cliffhanger-ish ending, that seems unlikely. Regardless, Miller, Wheeler, and company would have been better off sticking more closely to the source material.
A series like Cursed should elevate Nimue from her archetypal status, expanding and enriching her story. Instead, it’s just turned her into another fantasy symbol, with no more depth than a puddle.
Natalie Zutter has the aforementioned ogham tattoo and has never been so upset to share a bit of worldbuilding with a bad fantasy show. Talk much better Arthurian adaptations with her on Twitter!
Frank Miller should never be let near a television show, not even as an executive producer. The first episode was a mess of muddled character introductions, set pieces, and faltering world building that might work on a comic page, but don’t work on the small screen. The book by Tom Wheeler this series is based upon (which Miller illustrated) is a good piece of YA Arthurian re-telling/re-framing, but this series is basically unwatchable. Three episodes in, I gave up and decided to watch Warrior Nun instead.
I’m with mwschmeer, above, except I lasted for all of 4 episodes. Glad to know I made the right choice in simply giving up and moving on to finish up The Witcher instead.
I don’t know why if you are looking for a female-oriented Arthurian story you would need to look any farther than The Mists of Avalon. The book is great and has a very fresh perspective on the core legends.
@@.-@ – Three words, Marion Zimmer Bradley…
If they were making a prequel to Arthurian legend then they should have stuck to the legend. Any resemblance to the actual legend was…, well let’s face it, it wasn’t there.
As a lifelong Arthurian fanatic (it led me to study medieval history in college) I’ve always been disappointed in the lackluster movie adaptations. The 1950’s, in the post Ivanhoe flush, gave us a rather lackluster “Knights of the Round Table” and Alan Ladd’s horrible “The Black Knight.” In the 60’s we got the movie version of “Camelot,” with all it’s horrible 1960’s styled medieval costumes and from a source book that abounded with anachronisms. There’s only two movie versions that I think stand up well: John Boorman’s “Excalibur” (in spite of the chrome armour) and Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur.” Honorable mention of a BBC productionof Mary Stewart’s “The Crystal Cave” hampered by the usual cheap BBC budget. Recently we’ve been bombarded by dreck such as Guy Ritchie’s “Legend of the Sword” and Michale Hirst’s “Camelot” (complete with an Excalibur which by any definition of magic should be cursed). I keep thinking, if one wants to do a movie about the Arthurian Legend, why not use the legend. As this essay perfectly pointed out, there’s tons of grist for melodrama. Instead, they make up something derivative and slap a few Arthurian names on it and inflict us with it. Even the TV movie adaptation of the wonderful “The Mists of Avalon” suffered from some lackluster casting for Arthur and Lancelot and oversimplification of the book (along with a horrible betrayal of the ending). There’s good material out there folks, look for it and follow it to do a good movie. Gives us all of the Mary Stewart Merlin trilogy, with a good budget and proper casting, a remake of Mists following the book better, and some other fine reinterpretations such as Rosemary Sutcliff’s “Sword at Sunset,” Parke Godwin’s “Firelord,” or Eddison Marshal’s “The Pagan King.” Something that surprisingly has been overlooked is the legend of the return of Arthur. Aside from Peter David’s fun “Knight Life” where Arthur returns to run for Mayor of NY, or the graphic novel series “Camelot 3000,” this has been a strangely overlooked part of the legend.
@7
What about “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
#4: Amplifying somewhat on the oblique response in #5 (because I don’t think the matter is well known outside the genre community, and it’s thus very possible for many people to ask this question sincerely): MZB’s personal reputation has been greatly tarnished since her death; Fanlore covers the matter in considerably more detail than is appropriate here.
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Meanwhile:
Mostly this article tempts me to watch an episode or two of Cursed purely to get a look at the scope of the train wreck (or, I suppose, the chariot wreck if we’re attempting to be plausibly historical about it).
OTOH, I agree that I’ve yet to run across a full-on screen Arthurian adaptation that gets anywhere close to being definitive. There are a couple of instances in which Arthur makes a brief appearance in someone else’s story that come off decently; in this context the one I’d cite is in the Disney animated Gargoyles, where he’s accidentally woken up in Avalon and then does a walk-on a bit later in the course of setting out on his own modern quest. (The animated Quest for Camelot, very loosely based on one of the Chapman books mentioned below, starts with some promise and then goes very strangely off the rails.)
Interestingly, no one’s yet cited any of my preferred modern retellings – all, by happenstance, written by women:
• Vera Chapman’s trio beginning with The King’s Damosel
• Sharan Newman’s trilogy beginning with Guenevere
• Nancy McKenzie’s duology beginning with The Child Queen
And, as a side item, the decidedly variant but fascinating “Tales of Arthur” trilogy by Patricia Kennealy Morrison beginning with The Hawk’s Gray Feather (this being part of her Keltiad cycle).
I’m watching the BBC’s The Adventures of Merlin, which is basically Smallville with a Merlin that’s as young as Arthur and has to hide his powers like Clark Kent had to hide his in Smallville. It’s very enjoyable retelling, that took away most of the incest parts. Is Cursed better or worse than The Adventures of Merlin?
#11: Worse. So much worse.
I really don’t get the hate this show is receiving. I have enjoyed it immensely, and some of the twists are perfectly fine. Maybe it’s because I don’t watch movies or TV shows with a Political Correctness Scorecard handy. “Only one queer couple? One of them dies? FAIL” I would rather just enjoy a story than nitpick every single casting and demographic choice. I don’t give one whit about the skin color of the talent, so long as they HAVE talent, and these folks do.
The Arthurian legends have been thrown into a blender so many times over the years, they’ve been reduced to a fine paste. By this point, they’re all fanfics. I enjoyed the ride.
I was looking forward to this from the trailer but decided to bail after one episode. Yeah I should give it more but there is so much out there can I waste another 9 hours of my time on this which just annoyed the hell out of me as I watched it.
This article gives most of the reasons I did not like it but one I must mentioned is “my hill I will die upon”: It really annoys me when they do historical dramas, of any sort, where they take out their ear rings and yet you can clearly see the holes in their pierced ears. Common make up department, a little work please!
@7 = May I recommend ‘Arthur of the Britons’ TV series from the early 1970s? Oliver Tobias as the man himself, absolutely no magic at all and Brian Blessed as Mark of Cornwall. Still scores highly for me in extant Arthurian adaptations.
(I presented ‘King Arthur and all that’ as a panel at Helsinki Worldcon. I still have all the notes and am keeping up with the good, the bad and the ugly as regards adaptations and tie-in media).
The problem is that creators keep trying to stuff a whole Legendarium into a single film and therefore leave the Matter of Britain no room to breathe. It would be nice to see a film that tried to tell a single tale from the Arthurian Mythos (my pick would be the Adventure of Sir Gareth Beaumains, but doubtless other enthusiasts will have their own pick) rather than trying to shovel in everything at once.
In all honesty I’m not sure that the Biggest problem facing Arthurian adaptations is that they tend to be Prestige Productions and therefore tend to be one-offs (rather than an ongoing); there’s also the problem of separating them from all the other Fantasy Epics, given that almost any single fantasy saga you can think of owes at least some Debt of Inspiration to The Legends of Camelot (which means Creators working with the Arthurian are either obliged or feel obligated to go the extra mile to distinguish THIS retelling, for Good and for Ill).
#10 Thanks for the reminder about the Vera Chapman books. I have those, but it’s been so long since I’ve read them I had forgotten all about them. They were quite good. I’m quite familiar with the MZB problem (and I disliked her personally long before it was fashionable). I still enjoy Mists, and try to separate it from the odious author, but I understand that’s a personal choice that not everyone makes. I respect their choice.
#11 Curse is definitely worse than that Merlin series, which I considered a trash-bin itself. #16 I saw a little bit of “Arthur of the Britons” about 30 years ago or so, but not enough to be able make a judgement.
Sanders Anne Leubenthal touched upon modern Arthurian matters with a novel called “Excalibur,” about a young Welsh archeologist who goes to Mobile Alabama to look for Excalibur (it’s not as crazy as it sounds, trust me). “The Kid Who Would be King Arthur” was a nice little film. It’s more of a kids film, and there’s some poor humor attempts in it (I really disliked the young Merlin) but it was a nice empowering story about disaffected youth.
And to leave everyone with a bad recommendation, “Arthur the King,” a1985 tv movie with Malcolm McDowell miscast as King Arthur, Rupert Everett also miscast as Lancelot (I had to IMDB it to get this information and went “Rupert Everett? He was Lancelot? But he’s a good actor!), Candice Bergen playing Morgan Le Fay like Mae West, and a dragon that made you miss the quality of 1970’s Dr. Who SFX.
Stephen R Lawhead’s “Avalon: The Return of King Arthur,” deals with, well, the return of King Arthur, though in a reincarnation sense rather than a reawakening. I read it while rather younger, and I now find it was evidently the capstone of a series mostly set in the time of Arthur’s first kingship (and beginning even before that), but I seem to recall that it involved the reincarnated Arthur saving the institution of the British monarchy from the sinister machinations of a republican-minded Prime Minister, and leading a restoration of the essential British-ness of Great Britain. I’m a little nervous as to how it would read today if I were to dig up a copy.
My first encounter with the Arthur legend as a child was reading Twain’s, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” Then when D&D came out we got vorpal blades and swords of sharpness. Excaliber was the artifact version. Then followed the movie Excalibur. Arthur for me has always been this. Never had any desire to read the original story as opposed to Lord of the Rings that I’ve read multiple times. I don’t think I’m alone in this where most Americans don’t know the original book or care too. To me the story of Camelot has always been just a few tropes one can bandy about much like a cat does catnip. Excaliber is the coolest. I watched the first couple of episides and there was nothing cool about Cursed. When I think Frank Miller on the Screen then I think Sin City. The presentation did not come off as a graphic novel at all. It came off as a high school production. Seems a lot of nervousness in the telling with no sense of humour and total absence of sexual tension. The unrequited love comes of as prom queen and prom king competition. There was no theater, no larger than life bravado. Arthur as a bard put me to sleep. It was no fun at all. No fun. Why so serious? The red paladins were so flat in character this had to have been originally a high school production. And come on. Arthur hiding a Fey in a red paladin abbey made me take my shoe off and throw it at the screen. Anything that overwrought is Harlequin Romance material.
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In response to #11Ryamano I too am watching Adventures of Merlin I stopped to watch cursed……it became very confusing. If you Google the characters Merlin and Nimue at some point are spouses but in cursed they are Father and Daughter. Merlin is advisor to Uther and Arthur is not King nor Uthers child in Cursed. And Arthur has a love affair with Nimue. Arthur is however Morganas brother, which seems to be the only thing that is the same. I would recommend watching Netflix BBC series first before you delve into Cursed. It would have been better if they had just left out the names and made it its own story with new characters.
My personal feeling is that you can either put Camelot in a fairy tale Middle Ages or, if you put it in history, you can get the history right. It doesn’t mean you can’t have magic and fairies. But, if you’re going to make references to Rome, you need to know that Britain saw itself as part of the Roman Empire. Soldiers from Rome? The would have loved to have some to help them hold things together. Instead, they hired some Anglo-Saxon mercenaries who turned around and invaded. Vikings didn’t exist, and, whether you like Celtic Christianity or not, it was the dominant faith of the indigenous people.
Yes! IanLS@14: *that* was one of my “throw the shoe at the screen” moments! What is up with such laziness?
BBC’s The Adventures of Merlin is fun if you don’t expect any kind of accuracy, which I didn’t. It started to lose its sense of fun somewhere during the 3rd or 4th season though, and definitely went downhill.
I did not know about MZB’s personal history until now.
I withdraw The Mists of Avalon, and am embarrassed to have brought it up
Mary Stewart’s take on the legend starting with “The Crystal Caves” is still my all time fav. Since I read that everything else just seems washed out, including this tv show.
Loosely based, very loosely based Arthurian story at best. You can’t even call this a prequel, because it wasn’t. The only thing Arthurian about it was the use of the names of the characters. If you don’t know the story of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, then it was an entertaining program to watch. The special effects were nice, the art was lovely, the story was ok. But as for anything even remotely close to the story of Arthur, it failed. Not to say I won’t watch a second season if there is one. Maybe they can pull off a better story.
I think considering Cursed a prequel – or even set at all in the context of any of the usual Arthurian mythologies – sets you up for frustration. It’s really a wholesale reboot with completely reinvented character histories and relationships. And it is frustrating, particularly the poorly drawn and performed character of Arthur, though I admit I went into the show expecting light entertainment, and I did get that with plenty of action, hate-able villains, and lush production values. I also thought it was noticeably better in the second half of the season, for whatever that’s worth.
#26: No need for embarrassment or apology; as I noted above, this matter didn’t get a lot of attention out beyond the core SF/F genre community, while between them the Mists of Avalon book and TV miniseries attracted a much wider audience (for what were at the time perfectly good reasons).
The question of how to look at milestone creative works whose creators have also done problematic things is, in a word, complicated, and Mists certainly did, at the time, change the shape of the Arthurian landscape.
I was looking forward to this one because I’ve been a fan of Nimue’s a long time. She defeats Merlin! She gets tired of his relentless sexual harassment and locks that legendary sorcerer up in a cave *forever* by dint of her own cleverness before moving on with her life. She’s a rare medieval role model. I made it through three episodes but this is just not Nimue’s story. Someday I hope someone realizes that her story is worth telling, because it’s brilliant and empowering.
I happened to see a trailer for this and it seemed interesting, but after reading this review and comments I think I’ll pass on it. My favorite take on the Arthurian legend is Knights of God, a 13-part series broadcast in 1987 in the UK that was also published as a novel by the writer, Richard Cooper. Unfortunately it never received a commercial video release and the book is long out of print.
#7 Troyce – You mentioned Godwin and Sutcliffe, which is all I need to know to like your taste in Arthurian literature.
My two favorite screen adaptations of Arthurian material are both French. There’s Rohmer’s “Perceval le Gallois” which is literally filmed as a medieval stage performance of Chretien de Troyes’ poem. It has extensive whole hog quotes from the original and staging reminiscent of Monty Python’s prancing around with coconuts. It also captures the spirit of the original beautifully. Then there’s Bresson’s “Lancelot du Lac.” It has a lot of close ups of feet and a very effective presentation of post-Grail malaise.
Does “Cursed” have anything about Excalibur’s scabbard? People tell me that it was even better than the sword.
If you haven’t read Malory, it’s great. There are modern English renderings that are faithful and the original with regularized spelling isn’t that hard to get into. You should be able to find used Penguin paperbacks of Malory and his sources for cheap. I think they’ll be in print for as long as Penguin exists.
Thoughts:
1. The supposed time period is all over the shop. It’s trying to be maybe 100 years or so after the Romans left [shields and pennants left and a battle site partially grassed over] and Medieval at the same time. And there are Vikings.
2. This is clearly Fantasy Britain. We have a race of hominids with horns like Herne, plus a race with wings, fey and regular humans.
3. Merlin has a really intimate relationship with the cursed sword. Puts a whole new spin on where ‘Highlander’ Immortals hide their blades… Speaking of which, the glowing red runes down the blade put it in ‘rule of cool’ territory.
4. Various prominent characters are POC. Yay, diversity! And historically most plausible.
5. The Red Paladins are at odds with what is known about Celtic Christianity. Okay, Patrick was confrontational [according to some reports]. I think they are supposed to be sent by the Pope? Then we should be shown something of the historical stand off between the Papal envoys and the already established Celtic church.
6. Female power = yes! In whatever past period of Britian/England this is…sadly, no. Unfortunately. Boudicca was, as far as I’m aware, a one-off and it did not end well for her.
7. Iron Age roundhouses = very nice. But again, what time period is this?
The show itself was wicked dumb and gory. I lasted through one unhappy episode. But I would like to put in a plug for a more obscure, but utterly brilliant, Arthuriana in fiction: Jo Walton’s books! The King’s Name, The King’s Peace, and the Prize in the Game. Poetic, intelligent, beautifully written, and haunting. <3 Sulien forever.