'Merlin' S01E05: 'Lancelot'

More predictable sorcery, ill-conceived romance and bland characters populate this disappointing episode, a real comedown from last week’s excellent adventure. Fortunately there are still a few redeeming features lurking beneath the mediocrity, and the family show’s heart certainly seems to be in the right place.

It’s hard to figure out which is worse - the awful CGI on the Griffin beast or Santiago Cabrera’s wooden performance as Lancelot. Maybe they should have gone down the route of making the winged beast out of wood and rendering Lancelot through CGI?

Fortunately, Bradley James’s consistently commanding turn as Arthur manages to salvage the scenes he shares with Cabrera, an actor who was fine as tormented painter Isaac Mendez in Heroes, but all at sea in Camelot. He even botches the supposedly empathetic speech about his motivations in life, stemming from the brutal slaying of his family. You get more pathos and emotion from a London Underground platform announcer.

The romantic subplots, which only ever worked with Nimueh and Merlin’s flirtation, continue to infuriate. Now it’s Lancelot’s turn to display an overwhelming lack of chemistry with Guinevere, despite the attempts of the script to generate some intrigue. It all feels like some mandatory plot function thrown into the mix rather than any genuine feeling.

At least the moral core is satisfyingly genuine, as the powers inherited by those in certain families - specifically the right to become a knight - was wisely derided without being overly dogmatic. That theme definitely has contemporary significance, although attempts to incorporate modern day language into the script are less successful.

"It's a real page turner," Merlin comments, in a painfully incongruous manner, to the librarian. Sometimes, one can’t help but wonder if Merlin was a book, would it have been put down by now and relegated to doorstop duties?

> What do you think of the episode? Share your views