This is notice of a TV series called The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin that I am currently watching on Amazon Prime - I have seen three episodes.
It is, by some margin, the best fantasy drama I have seen on TV; very powerful and intriguing, beautiful and moving; very well written and edited.
And with superb background music that adds to the drama in an analogous way to Howard Shore's music of the Jackson movie Lord of the Rings.
If it manages to sustain this quality to the end of the series, it will rank among my favourite TV dramas of all time; but even if it does not, it has already done enough to be lastingly memorable.
Update note added: Episode Four was at a significantly lower level than the previous three. No memorable moments.
Thanks for alerting your readers to this. I'd never heard of it but have watched a couple of episodes and enjoyed it because it's not corrupted by modernism. It seems to have been completely (deliberately, I assume) ignored by mainstream critics, presumably because it has a Christian slant. But then the whole Arthurian story is to do with baptised paganism so Christ is central to it.
ReplyDelete@William - Yes, the first three episodes seemed to avoid nearly all the usual cliches - including the usual anti-Christianism of most fantasy. Of course, avoiding is just a negative! But there were some very beautiful dramatic moments; and I was actually moved to tear-up a bit more than once - including by Taliesin's songs.
ReplyDelete@David S - Let me know what You think of it! I'm not interested by mass media evaluations.
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