Young Merlin works magic in Camelot

A reworking of the ancient legend of the wizard and the king borrows from the Smallville style, writes Michael Idato.

SUPERMAN soared from the destruction of Krypton, Wonder Woman from the ancient Amazon city-state of Paradise Island and Batman from the crime-soaked alleys of Gotham City. Such "origin stories", as they are called in the comic-book vernacular, are compelling because they mark ordinary mortals for future greatness, says Merlin co-producer Julian Murphy.

"Something about these people marks them out from the rest of their world, there is something unique and special about them, and somehow that is tied to their origin," he says. The big-budget adventure TV series Merlin, which Murphy has co-produced with Johnny Capps, is the origin story of the future King Arthur and the wizard Merlin, a sort of Malory-meets-Smallville pitched at a family audience.
"But I think Johnny is right when he says we're probably more influenced by something like Smallville than we are by something like Malory, because I think the struggle is to make this contemporary, and this is a story before all of that happened, we're trying to see them grow up and that dramatic truth is just as important as what follows."