Review: Why BBC's Merlin Episodes Need to Be 50 Minutes Long

Last year the fans were horrified when the fourth series of Merlin was commissioned and there was a suggestion that there would only be ten episodes rather than the usual thirteen. I admit I was one of the aforementioned horrified because the thought of the show being cut down for what was ultimately budget cuts seemed unfair. The show wouldn't have gained an extra few minutes, just have three episodes cut.

But following the end of Series 4 I cannot help but feel that the show could do with some sharpening. For one thing, anyone who has now bought the series on DVD will see that a wealth of material was cut from all the episodes for no other reason than the episode was clearly running too long and had to be shaved. For example in The Wicked Day which saw the demise of King Uther Pendragon and the accession of Arthur loped off an entire side-line in which Arthur and Gwen talk about the moral issues surrounding using magic to cure Uther. They were deep, rich scenes and I thought it was an outrage that they were cut, especially since rather painfully cringy scenes involving 'Emrys' and Arthur were kept in.

Another issue that frustrated me was the portrayal of the character Agravaine. This is no slight on Nathaniel Parker's performance but the character was completely undeveloped and unrealised. He was introduced in the first episode of the series, literally appearing from the shadows, and then stayed in the light until Merlin finally kills him in the last episode in a gloriously remarkable scene which has absolutely nothing to do with Agravaine and everything to do with Colin Morgan's amazing acting.

The most frustrating thing about him was that his origins were never explained. He literally appeared out of no where and was then treated as if he had always been there. It is possible that the writers wanted us to think that Agravaine had always been there. It was the only explanation that my mother could come to to explain why the show had failed to give him any background or motivations for wanting to kill his own nephew and replace him with his sister.

Oh, wait! There was an explanation. Agravaine was in love with Morgana, apparently. But why? She never gave him any reason to love her and she certainly never treated him as if he would prosper from helping her. The entire logical of this motivation was completely flawed and filled with holes. Yet the worst thing was that a scene in the second episode of the series in which Agravaine explains his love for her was cut. On the DVD you can watch the scene in which Morgana cruelly twists Agravaine's arm while he declares his undying love for her. Even with this scene it is still a weak motivation for this character who up until now had never been seen or heard, but without it we literally had to wait until episode thirteen for Agravaine to even suggest that this was his one and only motivation. This completely blighted not only the character but the whole backbone of the show.

Still, the show might have been a lot better if this scene had been left in and told the audience immediately what ended up just being wild speculation on the road to nowhere. Therefore I think the show could benefit from being 50 minutes long as opposed to 42 minutes long.

But I also think that in order to achieve this the show does need to be cut down. The creators need to learn not to waste precious screen-time as they did during Series 4. What could have been the best series ever was slighted by numerous screw-ups and poor choices in the editing suite. There were at least two episodes which the show could have done without last series, including the episode in which Elyan was possessed and the episode with the snake-woman Lamia. These were episodes which could have been used to explain other series plot holes, which as Agravaine's backgrounds and other motives (to back up the unconvincing ones he was given) or wrap up the whole story of Arthur's birth - which was never explained and yet Arthur suddenly appears to have full knowledge of.

Agravaine was Ygraine's brother yet he showed no genuine motivation on her part for revenge. The killing of Uther wasn't deeply portrayed enough and could easily have been justified by his flaky and ridiculously conceived love for the she-wolf. Many opportunities were wasted and the show needs to get its act together for this next series.

After all, it is due to be the last one.

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Review: Being Human, the Half-Way Point

So, I know a lot of us were wondering what the future of Being Human would hold. We all wondered whether we could get by without our Fab Four, with the original cast number being taken down to one. We all wondered whether Annie would be strong enough to hold the show alone or whether the new characters would be as good as George and Mitchell without copying them.

Could the show cope without characters like Herrick as the Big Bad? Could the feared 'Old Ones' really be a massive threat? Could the show come up with a better plot than last years which foresaw the end of John Mitchell, every fangirl's wet dream?

But most importantly, would the show be able to survive the wave of unshakeable fan girls crying at the TV, "It's rubbish without Mitchell!"

Well, after all that wondering and with four episodes down (The Series half-way point) I can say this: Toby Whitehouse has kept the show fresh and alive where other show creators have failed.

For one thing the plot for Series 4 has so far bested all other plots to date. With a fantasy/sci-fi show there is always the pressure to 'top' what has come before. Take Doctor Who, for example. Once RTD brought back Gallifrey and the Time Lords in the New Years Special which also bid Bon Voyage to David Tennant's Doctor, we all wondered how the Hell Steven Moffat was ever going to top it. And what has followed since then?

Series 5 - The Destruction of the Universe and the Second Big Bang resulting in a BRAND NEW reality.
Series 6 - The Death of the Doctor, the Revelation of River Song's identity...

And what does Moffat have in store for the future? An answer to 'The First Question'. The only concern we have here is HOW much more than Doctor Who do after THAT? Because it is clear that the end of the last series foresaw the demise of the Eleventh Doctor (Who, by the way, is the Greatest Doctor of All Time. All Hail Matt Smith!) and from the sounds of things, this will be a regeneration that will make the Tenth Doctor's looking even more dreary and annoying than it already was!

Back to Being Human...


The plot of this series is definitely a step out of the comfort zone for many BH fans as the story has moved far away from its humble origins in a wafer pink house in Bristol. The story focuses on the destiny of George and Nina's daughter Eve who is apparently destined to bring about the destruction of the vampires. With the destiny comes two sets of enemies: on the one side we have the Old Ones, and elite group of vampires who fear the prophecy of the young baby. Then we have the mysterious Woman from the future, speculated by many to be Eve.

With the deaths of Mitchell, George and Nina, three of the original four line-up of Vampire, Werewolves, Human-Then-Werewolf and Ghost had been lost. Many people doubted before the show came back a few weeks back that the show could keep going after having suffered such heavy casualties on the cast list, leaving only the ghost Annie behind.

There is no denying that the original four characters were very popular, especially the vampire Mitchell. I, for my part, could not see the appeal of him as he seemed to demise as a character after Series 1 and by his death at the end of Series 3, he was my least favourite character. Even his finally getting together with Annie for a short interval felt a little empty because Mitchell had lost so much of what made him a sympathetic character. His desperation to hide and run away from his mass slaughter of the Box Tunnel 20 changed him and he had passed the point of no return. There was no going back. Aidan Turner was right to leave when he did because, in all seriousness, there was very little wriggle wrong for Mitchell's character any more.

However the loss of George and Nina, the Golden Couple of the show, did strike me as disappointing. Nina was my favourite female character: feisty and argumentative I grew to love her all the more my love of Mitchell declined. And as for George... he was always the heart and soul of the gang, but without Mitchell and Nina, he lost his edge and it right for him to die.

And so we were flung into Series 4 after the first episode with several things to get used to: a life without them, and a new life with Tom and Hal.

Tom we already knew from the last series as a young and not-too-bright werewolf, the adopted son of the Vampire Slayer McNair. With the death of his father it seemed only natural that he would move into HH with Annie and George, and with the death of the latter he has taken over in the show as Chief Werewolf. One of the appealing things about Tom is that he is so different from George and Nina. Although his lack of basic knowledge outside killing vampires and the cafe in which he works can be annoying at times, it is refreshing.

It is clear that the show is trying to re-create the friendship between the Werewolf and the Vampire with Tom's friendship with Hal. Of course, having spent most of his life killing vampires, this is difficult. Yet following Episode 3 in which Hal was forced by Annie to get a job and help support the household, it was nice to see the trust between Tom and Hal develop. It helps that they are really forced together by Annie, and by Baby Eve.

And as for Hal, the new Chief-Vampire in residence, he had an even tougher act to follow with the popularity of Mitchell. Yet all the fears of the fans have been averted and some (Including myself) actually prefer Hal. The king is dead, all hail King Hal!

The appeal of Hal's character lies in his classy self-control. Even people who still long for Mitchell admit also liking Hal, almost because he is impossible to dislike. He is oddly charming with his anal router of things he has to do to stay off killing and his enjoyment of the Antiques Roadshow (I think all of us regular viewers had a giggle by Tom and Hal's rejection of the "show about conmen...") and BBC Radio 4. But probably the reason why he is so difficult to dislike is because he has beaten Mitchell at one thing many fans, even the ones who adored him, held again him - his constant emo whining about how difficult it was to stay clean.

Hal is an Old One who has been clean of blood for fifty years following his live-in situation with another ghost-werewolf set. Mitchell was a one-hundred-and-twenty year old vampire he didn't manage to stay clean even once during the show's run despite his constant attempts. With every failure, sympathy for Mitchell faded but by bit. With Hal, we can start afresh. Here we have an odd-ball, strangely likeable vampire who has yet to fall off the wagon...

And all of us hoping he manages to protect Eve without killing someone in the process by feeding off their blood.

The Rise of the Female Messiah

Has anyone else noticed that in television and literature these days there is a rise in popularity, especially in science fiction and fantasy, of the notion of a Female Messiah or Saviour of the Human Race? I have just finished watching the opening episode to Series 5 of Being Human. They have killed off three of the four main characters and now all that remains is Leona Crichlow's character Annie, the vampire-slayer werewolf warrior Tom, (Who regular viewers will remember from the last series), and the human/werewolf hybrid baby newly christened 'Eve'.

Now, while this is only the first episode and everything is still a little ambiguous, (You need to watch it to understand why), it appears that George and Nina's daughter is the saviour of all human-kind as she will supposedly rid the planet of the vampires. In flash-forwards to twenty-five years into the future depict a bleak world in which, it appears, the beautiful Eve adorned with crucifixes and leading the human resistance against the vampires sacrifices herself in order to 'saves' humanity. By killing herself.

This seems to be a popular thread for quite a few television shows. It is a relatively new concept and one that in the case of British television finds its route in the mother of all British fantasy: Doctor Who. Anyone who watched last year's series which chronicles the love story of the Doctor and River Song will know that River Song herself is also a 'female saviour', Melody Pond. To the Silence, she is the warrior who will destroy the Doctor. To the Doctor, she is the woman who will save him. It should also be said that there are distinct parallels between the Being Human storyline with George and Nina's daughter and the Doctor Who storyline with Amy and Rory's daughter. They are both female children born to two of the protagonists of both shows; they are both feared and sought after by 'The Enemy' (The Silence/The Vampires); they are both human-plus (i.e. they possess supernatural qualities: a Child of the TARDIS/a Child of the Moon), and they both have to make ultimate sacrifices for the greater good. River gives her regenerations to the Doctor so that he could live, and Eve gives up her life to apparently complete the prophecy.

Given that Toby Whitehouse is the creator of Being Human, and has also written for Doctor Who, it is possible that the two shows have been influenced by each other. But is it more than that? Is this part of a growing trend that Woman is now the new Messiah for Man, rather than a man?

A quick look at the pre-Moffat era when Doctor Who was in the hands of Russell T Davis, there was still a hint of the Female Saviour. Rose Tyler took the Heart of the TARDIS into her head and destroyed a Dalek fleet; Martha Jones became known as the only person on Earth who could kill the tyrannical Master and defeated him with just the power of her words; and Donna Noble rehashed Rose Tyler, only instead of taking the TARDIS into her brain, she took the Doctor's consciousness. Three Women of the Doctor, all of them noted for being Messiahs. Martha Jones and Donna Noble in particular had legends circulated about them during their 'period of fame'.

But where did this trend of the Female Saviour and Messiah come from? Most people would argue that the first was Buffy. Yes, there have been many, many, many other female superheroes but the image of the Modern Female Saviour probably began with her. Even if you think it began earlier, you cannot deny that it has been heavily influenced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy, the blonde action-hero who saved the world countless times from demons and magical forced, died twice and rose again twice, and who kicked the stereotype that the pretty cheerleader in horror films always gets it first into the dirt.

It's not just Buffy either. Her best friend Willow was often totted as being more powerful than not only Buffy herself but the forces that created her powers in the first place. In the final episode of BTVS, Willow used her magic to change the natural laws that had determined that only one girl is chosen to be a slayer by making all potential slayers powerful. It should be noted that she is changing the law of men and, in effect, becomes a goddess. Cordelia, initially an air-headed yet gentle-natured cheerleader, matured into a sensible, self-sacrificing woman in Angel. The popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel almost certainly helped promote this idea of Women as Saviours.

The next question is this: where does it go from here? So far the only big show in the UK not to produce a Female Messiah I can think of is Merlin. It is really one of the few examples at the moment where the Saviour is still a man - Merlin himself - rather than a newborn girl child destined to smite the evil. Yet that isn't to say there is no room for them to go down this route also. It has been established that Arthur and Merlin will reunite Albion, but that Morgana and Mordred will bring about its destruction by killing Arthur. There must be some for of 'setting the world right'. This is probably the room for yet another girl-child destined to save the world when all else fails. Arthur and Guinevere have just got married; babies are the next course of action and the show-makers have suggested they might try to continue to show past Series 5, which was said to be the final series, airing next year. Moreover since the turn of the 21st century the notion of giving the fames King and Queen a female heir is steadily becoming more and more popular.

So there is room for the birth of a Female Messiah who will finish Merlin's work by avenging her father and destroying Mordred. We will have to wait and see. Either way, I see room for more and more Messiahs in TV shows because there is a market for it. The world is steadily becoming harsher and the religious believe we are entering the Reckoning. The idea of a saviour coming to Earth to save us all is something we all hope and dream of.

Moreover, in this day and age, there is no denying that women make for more appealing figure-heads and saviours.