Merlin
Having recently read Geoffrey Ashe’s Merlin: The Prophet and His History, I was interested in this British TV series, now showing on NBC. It turns out to be a teen soap opera in medieval costume. Merlin and Arthur are teens or barely adults, and the series is all about their relationships. Arthur has a distant father in King Uther, Merlin has his uncle Gaius and his mentor the Great Dragon. Merlin becomes Arthur’s servant, so there are class issues. There are also Guinevere and Morgana for female characters (Morgana is a royal, and Guinevere is her servant, in a reversal of the Arthur/Merlin situation). As far as I can tell from two episodes, the series is mostly about the male relationships.
Ashe’s book traces the Merlin legend back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing in 1135 and basing Merlin on a Welsh madman named Myrrdin. Geoffrey wrote in Latin, and Myrrdin would be Latinized as Merdinus. Geoffrey apparently thought that was too close to merde for his Norman French patrons, so he changed the name to Merlinus, which Anglicizes to Merlin.
Merlin, in the original myth, was a contemporary of Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father. The TV series moves him to Arthur’s generation.
There is something insidious about drama. We want drama to be “based on a true story”. We don’t want a true story, we want something false, but “based on” truth. Merlin, the TV series, doesn’t even have the truthiness of “based on a true story”. I suppose it has “mythiness”, being “based on a traditional myth”.