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First of all, apologies for the belatedness of this article. Family gatherings, Christmas cake and Scrabble wars all contributed to me not even watching the finale to Merlin’s fourth series until a couple of days ago. But what a finale it was! It was tense, exciting, romantic, and, in a Merlin first, stuff actually happened! The whole series has in fact been a considerable step-up from its predecessor, but that doesn’t mean it’s been without its problems.
For a start, at least half of the episodes were more effective sleeping draughts than anything Gaius could concoct: Morgana enchants some jewellery to make people do things they don’t want to (yawn). Someone tries to kill Arthur (yawn). Morgana tries to kill/ruin Arthur by enchanting some jewellery (Zzzzzzz). What I don’t understand is, if Morgana is so powerful, why doesn’t she do more than knock people over? Surely she could just take over Camelot by collapsing Arthur’s brain in or something really evil like that.
But, of course, a show like Merlin requires some suspension of disbelief, and I’m happy to do that when, for the most part, I’m getting ridiculously entertaining TV in return. I was particularly pleased that all the developments I’ve been screaming out for finally came to pass: Uther’s dead! Arthur’s king! Arthur proposes to Gwen! She betrays him with Lancelot! They sort it out! Arthur finds out Merlin’s a… oh, maybe not all of the developments.
It was also nice to see that there were no “comedy” episodes this year (even if there was still too much slapstick bromance between Arthur and Merlin). But it wasn’t just the storytelling that was more polished, with the acting being twice as good as it was in the first series (who knew that Katie McGrath was so good!), as were the visual effects and the oh so hummable music. The props still need a bit of work, though: Arthur’s crown looks like a reinforced Christmas cracker hat.
With all this in mind, here are 5 things that need to be done to make series 5 even better:
1) Merlin needs to come out – There’s only so much secret spell-casting you can watch. Just tell Arthur, Merlin, he’ll understand! Then we might get to see you do some proper magic.
2) Buy a Round Table – This was a memorable scene from series 3: “Hey, look guys, it’s a table.” “Oh yes! And it’s circular, isn’t it?” But then they didn’t ship the table up to the castle! They need to get this sorted fast, otherwise they’ll always be the Knights of the Round Table that don’t actually own a round table.
3) Make Morgana more threatening – While Morgana’s evil look remains unrivalled, she never actually does very much considering she’s an all-powerful sorceress. Whenever she does get hold of Camelot, they see her off like a one-week-only guest star. We need to see her in control for several episodes, long enough to make us wonder how our heroes are actually going to beat her.
4) Get Merlin some new clothes – Poor guy, it’s been four series now and not so much as a new scarf. If the costume designers are reading this, I hear that Diagon Alley is a good place for wizarding outfits. Oh, wait, Merlin’s not a wizard, is he? Silly me.
5) Make the fifth series the last – A controversial request, perhaps, but they have managed to stretch a story that any normal series would cover in 16 episodes across 52. With so many parts of the legend already ticked off, what can they actually do in the next 13 episodes? And please don’t mention enchanted jewellery.
Merlin Series 5 is due on our screens later this year.
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