In Camelot

One of my guilty pleasures these days is watching "Merlin," the BBC series. As a child I loved Camelot, the musical, going so far as to redecorate my room as Guinevere's. I liked the movie Excalibur, even Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I didn't like the Richard Gere First Knight movie all that much). When I grew up, I loved Mists of Avalon, the book; the tv miniseries was okay enough too. And, in college, I studied all of the Pre-Raphaelite depictions of the legends. Though I was never an Arthurian purist--didn't read Le Morte D'Arthur or Tennyson's Idylls of the King, didn't go to Glastonbury when I was in England. But I'm really enjoying watching the BBC show--it's not gross or violent, the storylines are entertaining (from the point of view of the young warlock), the acting enjoyable enough, the sets pretty in their fantasy-medieval way. Though I have one beef: the castle is way too French (actually filmed at Pierrefonds), something out of Les Tres Riches Herures, and not a good English castle at all. But I can ignore that. Because it's otherwise a great English tale . . . .