The Starz cable channel has gone full-on fantasy. And why wouldn’t they? Last January’s Spartacus: Blood and Sand and this summer’s The Pillars of the Earth miniseries were their two highest-rated series ever.
Now Starz is continuing along the same fantasy theme with a new 10-episode series, Camelot, coming in 2011, starring Joseph Fiennes as Merlin, Eva Green as Morgan, and Jamie Campbell Bower as Arthur.

Eva Green (Morgan)
But after literally hundreds of movie and TV adaptations of the King Arthur legend (one currently airing on the SyFy Channel!), is there really anything left to tell?
Maybe not, but the producers promise it’ll be unlike any Camelot-themed project so far: smart, sophisticated, and realistic to the Dark Ages in which it’s set.
“The magic really lies in the political essence of the piece,” star Joseph Fiennes told a gathering of critics at the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles last week. The characters have “very strong agendas politically, and that’s what I’m excited about, where the power lies rather than sort of slaying dragons and things like that.”
Still, Fiennes was quick to point out, “Yes, there will be some dark arts and we’ll see people changing shape and things disappearing!”
As most Camelot-themed projects do, Camelot uses Thomas Malory’s classic Le Morte d’ Arthur as its source material.
“We’re starting right from the birth of Arthur, and we’re going through,” said the show’s showrunner and head writer, Chris Chibnall. “We’re just about to [film] our version of the sword in the stone this week, which is not like any other version you’ve seen. And we’ll go through and kind of try and tell what might be the truth that lies behind the myth. What would have been the [real-life] events that could have contributed to these myths? What was interesting to me when we were talking about Camelot was excavating what it might be like to have lived then, and how these stories might have come about.
“We have a grand plan,” Chibnall said, “which, if we get things right, I hope we’ll have multiple episodes, multiple seasons.”

Joseph Fiennes (Merlin)
As for the all-important relationship between Merlin and Arthur, “Their relationship really is from when [Arthur] was born,” Fiennes said, noting that Merlin carefully plans the trajectory of Arthur’s life.
“I think of Merlin as a sort of cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Donald Rumsfeld,” Fiennes joked, referring to Kenobi’s mentoring qualities and Rumsfeld’s political agendas.
“Their relationship takes many different turns and shifts,” Fiennes said. “[Merlin is] sort of tutor. He’s a father figure. He’s a brutal headmaster. He’s got to give this boy all of the tools to be king in a ruthless world, and he has to do it in a very short space of time. So there’s a lot of ‘cruel to be kind.’”
According to the Chibnall, Camelot won’t have quite the sex or violence of Starz’ envelope-pushing Spartacus.
“This is an adult drama, of course, but I think we are our own show,” Chibnall said. “The amazing thing about Camelot is you can talk about political pursuits.”
That said, expect plenty of romance. “The extraordinary thing in all the versions of Camelot and the Arthurian legend is it’s all about the romance,” he said. “It’s all about the passion. It’s all about great ideals compromised by falling in love with the wrong person … And also, we have some beautiful actors as well, so, frankly — anyway, let’s move on.”
Said Fiennes, “There will be, I’m sure, scenes of intimacy, scenes of violence, but I think really underpinning that, and I think it’s a big difference in what I’ve witnessed, is that there’s a very deep sense of character and narrative.”
Interestingly, Fiennes actually grew up near Stonehenge, a place that factors into some of the Merlin legends.
“I used to climb those rocks, and there was some kind of myth that Merlin brought those stones and built that himself for some pagan ritual,” Fiennes said. “But I certainly, at the age of nine or ten, was climbing them — marauding all over them. And they’re very full of energy, so maybe there’s some lineage to that moment to where I am now. Who knows?”
The project, an Irish-Canadian co-production, started work in June at
Ardmore Studios, just outside of Dublin, which, for the record, is where John Boorman’s 1981 movie Excalibur was also shot.
But the producers say they’re taking strong advantage of the Irish countryside as well.
“”We want the richness and vibrancy, and we want a sense of reality to it,” Chibnall said. “Big and bold and cinematic and epic. It’s like the country has been waiting for Camelot to be there because the landscapes are perfect for the Dark Ages.”

This past January, Spartacus: Blood and Sand premiered on the Starz network to much hype and expectation, and in a truly shocking twist, it actually delivered.
Just as the network promised, Spartacus pushed the envelope farther than any show that had come before it.
SD: It still comes down to the story and what works best for the characters. The only time I had a reaction to anything that’s said, is every once in a while I’ll come across a comment on the
Deknight casually makes a reference to social activism as an almost incidental side effect of their storytelling, but that is where the show is truly remarkable. That the show could be considered progressive is not a statement they’re attempting to make. It just is.
When the schedule for the upcoming season was announced, it was interesting to note that the network had added not one but two more fantasy or fantasy-ish series with Camelot and Pillars of the Earth (a mini-series). They’re also co-producing the next season of the UK sci-fi series Torchwood in collaboration with the BBC.
Their other medieval England series, Camelot, is yet another adaptation of Arthurian legend — apparently, the landscape has room enough for this and Merlin. Production has yet to begin, and no word has come out yet as to whether the tone will be similar to Spartacus – over the top, stylized, comic book aesthetic — or a more sober, serious Arthurian affair, such as the TNT version of Mists of Avalon.
A few years ago, I shivered with anticipation when I started seeing video of stuntmen and actors training for 300, which looked to be the most epically awesome movie I’d ever see.
The show challenged the straight-washing of history that almost every Roman epic is guilty of by showing what is probably the first gay couple to ever exist in a filmed story about gladiators, the aforementioned Pietros and the alpha male, Barca. It showed that women could be unbelievably powerful in this male-dominated world if they were clever enough, as seen in the characters of Lucretia and Illyithia.
Sadly, the last few episodes were punctuated with the very real fact that Andy Whitfield, the handsome, charismatic, and utterly bad-ass lead actor, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Needless to say, his fan base is enormous after this season, and a lot of good will is being sent his way.
Wow. Wow! WOW!
The use of time-switching and flashbacks was a surprise, since the show hasn’t ever told a non-linear story before, but the surprise was more than welcome. What better way to send off the show by mixing it up a little?
It takes a lot to shock me — I grew up in the internet age, after all — but I literally found myself holding my breath as Crixus stabbed Lucretia’s belly, intent on killing a child that may very well be his. I’ve never seen something so viscerally terrifying, and while the show unexpectedly displayednuance by not focusing on the actual stab, the effect was still chilling.
One thing you can never accuse Spartacus: Blood and Sand of is false advertising. The show certainly gives us plenty of Spartacus, plenty of blood, and plenty of sand, and in the most recent episode, entitled “Revelations,” a whole butt-load of info was revealed.
After last week’s devastating episode, fans of Starz’ epic gladiator series were starting to squirm, wondering just how long we could take this. Week after week, something unbelievably awful happens to Spartacus and the rest of the gladiator’s in Batiatus’ ludus, which, given the body count, is the last place on earth you would ever want to be.
The show has certainly moved away from insane, 300-style action sequences in favor of palace intrigue, and I’m okay with that, especially when the plot becomes as riveting as it was in “Old Wounds.” Having definitively proven that no character is safe, the writers keep you on the edge of your seat, because the audience knows the plot can spin in a whole new direction in seconds.
As I’ve said before, one of the reasons why this show kicks so much ass is because it takes chances like few other shows ever do, and when the showrunner, Steven DeKnight, warns fans that no character is safe and anyone could die, he actually means it.
Cleverly, these moves and more, chess-like as they are, are symbolized in a central scene in which Batiatus and Spartacus play a rather chess-like board game, one based on military strategies. While Spartacus proves to be quite adept at battle strategy, we soon discover that once he’s off the game board and out of the battle field, he is easily, and tragically, out-maneuvered.
I can’t say I’m surprised that Varro died, since he never seemed to be a central character, but I was surprised it happened so soon (I had a expected a season finale death), and I was shocked by how it had happened. As soon as Numerius switched the bill, my heart leaped into my throat, because I knew this was the last time we’d see Varro. (And while I’m sure the actor portraying him, Jai Courtney, is saddened as well, he must be grateful to no longer have to bleach his hair.)
In fact, the episode is called “Whore,” and like all the best titles it has several meanings. In the more colloquial, non-professional context, we have Lucretia, a loose woman if ever there was one, who is constantly cheating on her husband with the studly Crixus. Batiatus is equally slutty in the way he uses his female slaves for his carnal pleasure.
In other shocking news, as we reported earlier this week, this ep goes there in terms of full-frontal nudity for our lead character (not lead actor, mind you), as a masked Spartacus bares all to his “john,” a beautiful, blond, and equally masked noblewoman.
So, the past couple of episodes have been real downers. Therefore, it’s refreshing that with “Mark of the Brotherhood,” Spartacus: Blood and Sand starts to return to form.
Ilithyia watches the goings on from the balcony with Lucretia and Batiatus, and by now her fetishistic enjoyment of the gladiators is so obvious that Lucretia suggests she becomes a patron to one of them. To further goad her, Batiatus orders all of the new recruits to disrobe, and we get a gander at what I imagine has to be one of the show’s notorious prosthetic penises. If I’m wrong, the actor playing the new Gaul slave has a lot to be proud of. A lot.
The show has also done a good job exploring the role of women in this society, and the bitchapalooza that ensued when Ilithyia brought her friends to the ludus was a fun, snarky diversion, while also setting up what will be an important plot point in the episodes to come.
Okay, so last week’s episode was a bummer. We know that.
I didn’t realize how emotionally attached I had become to Pietros. Seeing him wandering around the ludus, a lost soul who believes he was abandoned by his one true love, was bad enough, but then on top of this he becomes the favorite victim of another gladiator, one who routinely beats and rapes him. When he started appearing with swollen black eyes and cuts, it set off every protective instinct in my body.
To be fair, it does set up nicely what I imagine might be a future storyline, in which Doctore discovers the truth behind Barca’s “departure,” but I’ve seen the next two episodes and that doesn’t factor into either of them. But I will say this — the next two episodes are pretty awesome.