8 / 10
Merlin is the NBC miniseries that retold the Arthurian legend from the wizard’s perspective. Steve Barron directed it. Sam Neill plays Merlin. Helena Bonham Carter plays Morgan le Fay. Miranda Richardson plays Mab, the old goddess fighting against Christianity’s spread through Britain. Isabella Rossellini plays Nimue, Merlin’s eventual love. Martin Short plays Frik, Mab’s minion. Rutger Hauer plays King Vortigern. The miniseries aired in two parts in April 1998 on NBC and is among the most ambitious television fantasy productions of the 1990s.
The premise is the smart angle. Most Arthurian adaptations are about Arthur.
Merlin tells the same story from the wizard’s point of view. That means the audience watches him recruit Uther, manipulate the conception of Arthur, raise the boy, oversee the rise of Camelot, and watch the kingdom fall apart while the wider pagan-versus-Christian conflict moves underneath. Merlin’s love for Nimue is the throughline that holds the long runtime together.
Merlin surprises me more than it has any right to. It’s a network miniseries with 1998 television effects, and it still tells the Arthur story better than most of the big-screen versions I can think of, because it’s smart about who’s pulling the strings. Sam Neill holds it together, Helena Bonham Carter sets it on fire, and I forgive the cheap-looking dragons for both of them.
The Approach
The script frames the Arthurian cycle as a proxy war between Mab, the old goddess of pagan Britain, and the new Christian god whose worshippers are gradually spreading across the island. Merlin is Mab’s nephew, raised to be her champion. He breaks with her early and spends the rest of the runtime trying to limit the damage she’ll do to Britain in her dying anger. Arthur is a tool of that effort.
The kingdom of Camelot is supposed to be a Britain that survives both Mab’s paganism and Christianity’s intolerance. The kingdom fails because human beings won’t let it succeed.
The framing is more thoughtful than most television fantasy of the period attempted. Mab is an old god watching her religion die and hunting for someone who’ll keep her name alive, and Christianity gets no free pass either. The film respects both forces and grants neither full moral approval. Miranda Richardson plays Mab’s fury with real grief underneath it, and I end up half on her side.
For Writers
A familiar story told from an unfamiliar perspective can produce something close to original work. Merlin tells the Arthur story from Merlin’s vantage. The audience knows the events. The novelty is in the angle. The lesson is that you don’t always need a new story. Sometimes you need a new perspective on an old one. The Arthurian cycle has been retold for fifteen hundred years and there’s still room for another version that makes us see the familiar material differently.
Sam Neill
Sam Neill carries the production. The role spans Merlin’s childhood through his old age, with extensive aging makeup across the runtime. Neill plays the wizard as a man whose love for one woman is the only thing that consistently anchors him through centuries of political maneuvering. The performance is measured instead of showy. Neill doesn’t chew scenery. He chooses one or two scenes per episode to do real dramatic work and otherwise stays in a tone of quiet competence.
Playing the role this way is what makes it work, and I think it’s the smartest call in the production. A more theatrical Merlin would have tipped the miniseries into pantomime. Neill’s restraint lets Helena Bonham Carter and Miranda Richardson go big without throwing the production off balance, and Bonham Carter going feral next to his calm is a pleasure whenever she’s on screen.
For Writers
A restrained central performance gives the rest of the cast room to be larger. Sam Neill plays Merlin as steady so that Helena Bonham Carter can play Morgan le Fay as feral. Miranda Richardson plays Mab as theatrical. The contrast makes everyone more effective. The lesson is that ensemble work depends on dynamic range. If everyone is at full intensity, no one’s intensity tones. Modulate. Let some performers go bigger by keeping others smaller.
The Effects
The effects are 1998 television effects. The dragons are obvious CGI, the transformations look cheap, and the Cave of Ice and the Land of Mab are stage sets with selective lighting.
They bug me a little, mostly because the rest of the production looks so good. The film doesn’t have feature-film resources and never pretends otherwise, and the effects are competent within the format.
What the production spends its money on is costumes and production design. The Camelot sets are convincing as a working medieval court. The pagan and Christian iconographies are visually distinct in ways that support the script’s thematic argument. The costume work is the production’s strongest visual element.
For Writers
A production with limited resources should spend the resources where they’ll be most visible to the audience. Merlin (1998) put its money into costumes and sets instead of into expensive effects. The audience spends most of its viewing time looking at people in rooms. The clothing and architecture are visible in every scene. The effects are visible only occasionally. The lesson is to invest in the elements that are on screen most of the time. Spectacular set pieces with mediocre everything else look worse than mediocre set pieces with strong production design.
Craft Note
Steve Barron directed. Edward Khmara wrote with David Stevens and Peter Barnes. Sam Neill as Merlin. Helena Bonham Carter as Morgan le Fay. Miranda Richardson as Mab and the Lady of the Lake. Isabella Rossellini as Nimue. Martin Short as Frik. Rutger Hauer as King Vortigern. Paul Curran as Uther. James Earl Jones as the voice of a creature. Trevor Jones composed the score. Aired on NBC across two nights in April 1998. Roughly three hours of total runtime. Two Emmy wins from fifteen nominations.
Is Merlin worth watching?
8/10. It’s as thoughtful as television fantasy got in the 1990s, and I’d put it ahead of plenty of theatrical Arthur films. The performances are good, and the script finds a new angle on material everybody already knows. The dated effects are what cost it the higher score, and they annoy me because everything else deserved better. Watch it for Sam Neill and Helena Bonham Carter. If 1998 television production values make you wince, skip it.
