TV GUIDE: Roush Review: Lots of New TV, But Only One Kills It
Apr 1, 2011
by Matt Roush
Camelot
(Friday, 10/9c, Starz)
No two versions of the King Arthur myth are exactly alike, and significant liberties have been taken here, including a fresh twist to the sword in the stone (here a waterfall) incident. But rarely has the story been rendered so dreary and insipid.
Starz seems to believe that gratuitous nudity — look, it's a dream vision of Guinevere, naked on the beach! — are enough to provide an "adult" pay-cable edge. Actual flesh and blood characters would be more appreciated.
Instead, we get a pallid Arthur (Jamie Campbell Bower, Caius in the Twilight movies) played as a randy, earnest adolescent, an accidental king whose heart is in the right place but who keeps sticking his sword in all the wrong ones. He takes marching orders from a muddled Merlin (Joseph Fiennes) who's all glower and no power. As usual, the villain gets the juiciest moments, and while Eva Green does little more than flash her eyes as Arthur's sorceress half-sister Morgan, she at least seems to be enjoying herself.
You begin to wonder if they decided not to name Arthur's sword Excalibur this time (at least not in the first three episodes) because it might remind us of John Boorman's dazzling 1981 movie — which introduced me as a college undergrad to the delights of Helen Mirren as an alluring Morgana. This Camelot only tends to make me yawn a lot. Doubt that was the intention.
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