If there’s one story that’s been told over and over again, both in film and on television, it’s the legend of King Arthur, a founding myth in British history that audiences have seemingly never had enough of. Without going any further, the Collider website published an article on the eight best series on the subject, giving first place to the animated Wizards: Tales of Arcadia created by Guillermo del Toro and the last to the Camelot series starring Joseph Fiennes. For its part, the ScreenRant site has done the same with the 20 best films set in the Arthurian world, with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave’s Camelot in first place, released in 1967, also mentioning Disney’s animated classic The Sword in the stone and Monty Python’s satire Knights of the Square Table.
To that long list we must now add The Winter King, a miniseries that premiered in the United States in August on MGM and can be seen starting this Friday on Movistar Plus. Officially based on a trilogy of novels written by the British Bernard Cornwell, although certainly distant from the original material, the ambitious proposal incorporates almost all the characters we know from the legend and adds a few more, taking a path closer to historical recreation than to the fantastic epic.
Even so, the influence of Game of Thrones is notable in its aesthetic proposal, and there has been no shortage of critics who point out that after all, George R.R.R. Martin never hid having been inspired by British history to create Westeros, although he never mentioned that the legend of the round table was one of his sources.
Set in the early Middle Ages, more precisely in the 5th century as the Saxons try to conquer the rest of what will once be England by attacking the various Anglian kingdoms, the series begins by presenting Arthur (Iain de Castecker) at his worst, when After failing to defend his half-brother and heir to the throne in a battle, he is expelled from Dummonia by his irate father, King Uther, played by the only actor with a vast career in the entire cast, Eddie Marsan, who, angry not only Because of his failure but also because of his status as a bastard, he beats him to death before sparing his life.
On his way to Avalon, where Merlin (Nathaniel Martello-White, more a leader than a magician) presides, he finds a Saxon village in which all its inhabitants have been massacred and in which, pierced by a spear, an orphan named Derfel clings to life. Arthur rescues him and leaves him in the care of Merlin and a druid priestess, Nimue.
In the first chapter the story jumps eight years, and reunites with Derfel (Stuart Campbell) and Nimue (Ellie James) now adults, who will be the ones who will meet Arthur again, already transformed into a warrior as fierce as he is human. , who after the death of his father will be in charge of uniting the different kingdoms in a frontal war with the Saxons. The series does not lack a Guinevere, played by Jordan Alexandra, although she does not appear until quite late in the story and there is also Morgan (Valerie Kane), Arturo’s older half-sister. However, she is surprised by the absence of Lancelot, one of the key characters in almost all the series and films inspired by the myth, although it is likely that he will join in a second season.