Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what I’ve seen over the past week either in film or television. On the film side, if I have written a full length review already, I will post a link to that review. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief snippet of my thoughts on the film with a full review to follow at some point later. For television shows, seasons and what not, I’ll post individual comments here about each of them as I see fit.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Merlin (Season 1; and Episode 1, Season 2)

A weekend with a lot of issues getting in the way kept me from catching up on a lot of films I wanted to see. I did, however, manage to get the first full season one and first episode of season 2 of the BBC series Merlin watched.

Knowing some, but not a lot, about the Arthurian legend, this BBC series takes liberties with the saga and creates a youth-driven production surrounding Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and Morgana as they grow up together in defense of Camelot under the leadership of King Uther Pendragon. Where the series lacks in adherence to legend it more than makes up for in its entertaining and engaging characters. Led by a charming, but bumbling Colin Morgan as the young Merlin, the cast features strong support and more engaging characters than a lot of the fantasy tales coming out of the United States. While it isn’t the most quality production the BBC has ever done, the visual effects are obviously done on a small budget (instead of putting effects and actors together, we’re given action/reaction shots that suggest commingling without having to employ costly green screen effects…at least not in most shots with strange monsters attacking our protagonists.

It’s the kind of show that’s a great diversion when you aren’t feeling your best or when you have a lot of tedious, time-consuming work to get done and need a companion to while away the time. Merlin is a show that I’ve grown fond of across the span of one season and hope to enjoy through to its conclusion.