Are they costume dramas, or are they lack-of-costumes dramas? You decide.

[amanuensis1]

Game of Thrones is the series on everyone's lips/blogs/etc., and I'm loving it, but I'm also loving Camelot on Starz. I adore what they're doing in twisting the legend about. Parentage, the love triangle, the sword in the stone...their take on Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake in last week's episode had my jaw in my lap and my heart wrung in an invisible fist. Anyone else enjoying this and want to babble?

I know that all cable series have to be full of nudity and copulation to prove themselves these days, but I don't need that, honest. I just need a good story told well. I do like drama, though, and does it feel like nudity = drama to you, in all these bosom/bottom/boinking series that are showing up all over late-prime-time premium cable? Maybe that's it. (Mind you, Eva Green's breasts are never going to be superfluous. In any universe.)

In other b/b/b cable series, I've given up on The Borgias after 4 eps. It's not bad, it's just not as interesting to me as the other things I'm watching now, and my time is limited. Sorry, Jeremy Irons, it wasn't your fault.

Comments

[lady_songsmith]

Interesting. I'm having the reverse reaction to Camelot/Borgias; I'm in love love love capslocky-babble love with the Borgias, while Camelot I can't quite decide if I like enough to keep watching (and yet I do). The gratuitous nudity is one of the things turning me off about it; the nudity in the Borgias has so far felt at least moderately relevant to the plot, whereas in Camelot they get naked seemingly on a quota-per-episode basis (I refer you to the Morgan-wolf scene as example one).

But, yes, the twist on the Lady of the Lake was positively heartwrenching. This week's episode, though, made me not like Merlin much. I waffle a LOT where Merlin is concerned. Sometimes he's quite badass and I love him other times I really want to throw things at the screen.

I'm not sure how I feel on the love triangle twist. In the first place, it reflects very badly on both Arthur and Gwen's moral character, as opposed to the legend's political-union vs true-love theme, where they married with, presumably, honorable intentions and only later did Lancelot come between them. Here we have Gwen marrying on a basis of lies, and I really don't care for that at all. In the second place, they haven't given us any reason for Arthur and Gwen to be in love. It's entirely teenage hormones and base lust, and this is not the sort of thing on which the fall of mythic empires should be based, 'gritty reality' version or not. This latest episode ("Justice") took a step toward correcting that, but a very teeny step, and as we're already supposed to think there's a great romance brewing -- bah. Next week we'll probably get some outright adultery to judge by the summary and I'm not looking forward to that.

Game of Thrones I haven't gotten into at all. I started the books last summer based on many, many recs, but gave up at the end of the first one when, after hundreds of pages of investment, GRRM killed off the only character he'd actually managed to make me give a damn about. Sorry, but I can read thousands of other War of the Roses versions where I actually like the characters involved. Life is too short to slog through thousands of pages of gruesome character torment for its own sake. So I haven't even bothered with the show, which means I'm missing a great deal of the f-list squee. Oh well.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason I like Camelot so well is because I'm so familiar with Arthurian legend and there's the delight of seeing familiar things played out on the screen AND seeing them played out in unexpected ways, here. And Game of Thrones has a similar advantage except without the twists; I get to see the story I love adapted to screen. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the books and that you have to endure all the squee now!

So possibly I can't love The Borgias enough because I have a far more superfical knowledge of Italian history? Hm, well, it's probably not that simple because I love uncovering stories about which I know nothing, too.

Re: the love triangle, I've always had the never-been-in-that-situation, easy-to-judge-from, righteous-prig's position of disliking Guinevere for betraying her husband. I find it interesting to watch this twist on it. I'm not happy that I judge her like that; some versions make it easier for me to be less judgmental. (Camelot 3000, interestingly, is one.)