A nice bit of switching by the BBC coming up, as the very camp current run of Dr Who finishes and the potentially even camper series four of Merlin follows on. I'm rather looking forward to the new series of Merlin, which would have surprised me a couple of years back. Initially a pretty poor show, I was enticed back in by series three, which happened to show at a point where I was a bit broke and trying to avoid /going out on Saturday nights.
Arthur and Guinevere were still annoying, and Victor Meldrew still hadn't remembered how to act, but elsewhere things were better. The writing and production quality had gone up, and Colin Morgan was being given chances to actually show what he was capable of. The ever wonderful Anthony Head was of course still giving a brilliant performance as the stern, somewhat fascistic Uther Pentdragon, increasingly paranoid and unhinged. The totty factor had been considerably upped with the addition of recurring character Gwaine, played by the beautifully Irish (and just beautiful generally) Eoin Macken, whose scenes of 'friendship' (or bromance, in the modern parlance) with Merlin were so homoerotic as to border on the obscene. If ever a TV duo needed to do each other, it was them, not since Mulder and Scully had such pent-up sexual tension oozed form the telly.
But the real gem was Morgana, played by the also Irish and beautiful Katie McGrath, who when I had last seen her was an irritatingly wimpy and overly moral glorified housewife; somehow by series three Morgana had been transformed into a vampy bitchess worthy of early nineties Disney, who practically steepled her fingers and cackled every time another character looked away, and who took every opportunity she could to pull on long velvet gowns and go stalking off into the moonlit night to plot with other witches.
So I will be watching, and this page here has absolutely nothing to do with my interest. Nor this one. Well, maybe a little. That and the fact that the last series had the ever fabulous Miriam Margoyles playing an evil pixie called Grunhilda.
And of course, lets not forget that Gwaine wasn't the first 'friendship' Merlin had had.
Come on BBC. You want something daring in your family drama? Lets have a tea-time love triangle between Merlin, Arthur and Gwaine that will make the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot thing look like the none-event it probably will be
