Saturday, September 19, 2009

Merlin 2x01: The Curse Of Cornelius Sigan

While the Doctor's away, strange creatures still reign on BBC Saturday nights with Merlin. The second series of the surprise hit debuted tonight, with "The Curse Of Cornelius Sigan."

The four stars of the show now all have a bit more experience under their belts, and it shows, at least with Colin Morgan (Merlin) and Bradley James (Arthur), considering that Katie McGrath (Morgana) and Angel Coulby (Gwen) got a combined total of about two minutes of screen time. The young medieval heroes are back in fine form, with plenty of the usual homoerotic subtext in the mix. There's plenty of Merlin acting like a jealous high school girlfriend when Arthur's attentions are drawn away from him, while Arthur is still every bit the kid in elementary school who expressed crushes through pigtail-pulling.

I think I just had the revelation that Merlin and Arthur are like Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe.

Anyways, jellied staplers aside, Mackenzie Crook guest-starred in this episode. I was never into Pirates Of The Caribbean, so I'm only familiar with his work on Skins and, of course, The Office. He was a good villain, certainly more psychological than physical. It's a shame that this wasn't a two-part storyline, it would have been nice to see more of him. This was a story that could have easily been spread across two weeks. Hopefully we'll get a multi-part plotline at some point instead of having this monster-of-the-week routine. While the first series had the running thread of Nimueh, we never saw the words "To Be Continued." Still, I'm looking forward to these new adventures, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

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