TV adaptation of The Warlord Chronicles, a Historical Fantasy trilogy retelling Arthurian Legend by Bernard Cornwell.
It was announced for MGM+ just before the COVID-19 Pandemic hit. The production eventually moved to ITV, filming having begun in 2022. The first season, comprising of ten episodes, eventually premiered on MGM+ in August 2023 in the US only and releasing one episode a week. Episodes began airing in the UK in December 2023, streaming on ITV's service ITVX with all episodes available at once, a month after the final episode of the season was released in the US.
The first season covers part of its namesake book, The Winter King, the first book in the trilogy.
Tropes:
- Abled in the Adaptation:
- Morgan is introduced in the first book as scarred and disfigured from a fire, wearing a mask to hide her face. She is (yet) unburned in the show.
- While Gundleus assaults Nimue, he doesn't take her eye.
- Hywel has both legs.
- Adaptation Expansion: The show doesn't have the Framing Device of old Derfel telling the story, and it has an omniscient shifting point of view going and forth between subplots and characters rather than stick to just Derfel's.
- This means Arthur gets more focus early on in the first episode as it shows him getting banished from Britain by Uther, but not before saving Derfel as a child and taking him to Avalon.
- The show also shows Arthur and Guinevere meeting for the first time as it happens, away from Derfel's point of view.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Merlin leads Nimue to believe she has Virgin Power and therefore must forsake her attraction to Derfel, and this becomes more of an issue after Gundleus rapes her, at least partly to remove her power or so he believes. In her despair, she has suicidal thoughts and Derfel has to snap her out of it, and later she aborts the resulting pregnancy despite Merlin telling her it's the will of the gods. In the book, she is under no such belief or restriction, not being a virgin thanks to the dirty old man Merlin, and she takes her rape and maiming in dissonantly far better stride, as she believes the trial empowered her in the eyes of the gods, and she doesn't get pregnant.
- Adaptation Name Change: Gorfyddyd (pronounced "Gor-fith-id") is simplified to Gorfydd ("Gor-fith").
- Adapted Out: The first season goes past the points in the books where Culhwch, Lancelot and Galahad are introduced, presumably leaving them for later seasons.
- Age Lift: Merlin is portrayed as being early to mid-middle-aged at most, not elderly, even after there's a Time Skip of 8 years where Derfel goes from a boy to a young man.
- Artistic License – History: The costuming here leans a bit more towards "fantasy" than how it was described in the books in a more historically grounded way, as with how armor is depicted.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: Nimue renames the injured Saxon boy in her care "Derfel", and says it means "strong", and so he'll pull through. It's "Cadarn", his future epithet and the name of the Camelot-equivalent fortress Caer Cadarn, that's supposed to mean "strong" or "mighty".
- Decoy Protagonist: The first half of the pilot episode specifically focuses on Arthur and his banishment (an off-page event in the books), before shifting focus to Derfel, the book protagonist.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: At the start of the first episode, Arthur has a full beard and hair down to his shoulders. At the end, when Merlin goes to collect him from Gaul after eight years in exile, they're both shorn short.
- Good Shepherd: Bishop Bedwin, even when in pagan Avalon with Norwenna.
- Face Death with Dignity: Arthur doesn't resist when Uther is about to execute him for failing to protect the original Mordred, though intervention from Morgan and Merlin spares Arthur from this.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Played with, as in the books. There are moments where Merlin and Nimue's powers seem to be unambiguously real, as they both see visions only they and/or the other can see, like spirit animals that are invisible to Derfel. Merlin touches the boy Derfel and seems to telepathically sense his doomed village, but it could just be Merlin imagining the obvious since Arthur told him about it. But later Merlin touches baby Mordred and sees bloody visions that have no reason to happen unless it's actually foresight. On the other hand, the birds Merlin releases in during the bull idol ceremony seem to have just been pre-placed, and Nimue clearly uses fire trickery when trying to defend Avalon against Gundleus.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: How Uther punishes a wounded Arthur after the first Mordred's death in battle.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Stuart Campbell (Derfel) noticeably slips into his natural Scottish accent while berating Gundleus for his treachery.
- Politically Correct History: For a show set in 5th-Century Britain (and briefly Gaul), the amount of black Africans and even West Asians is odd to say the least. (Sagramor's presence in Arthur's band notwithstanding, as the books explain him to be a Numidian auxiliary of the old Roman army.) The apparent Hand Wave explanation for Merlin's Avalon, where most such characters and extras are, is a place for "those who don't fit in".
- Race Lift: A number of Celtic British characters including Merlin and Guinevere are portrayed by black British actors. Thus Sagramor is no longer the unique Token Minority with nobody spooked by his appearance alone, to the point that Arthur weaponizes this.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation:
- Baby Mordred is Uther's son instead of grandson, and thus Arthur's half-brother instead of nephew (and probably half-brother to the elder Mordred instead of his son).
- Mordred's mother Norwenna is thus Uther's latest wife and queen rather than daughter-in-law (the elder Mordred's wife), despite being much younger, young enough to be the latter as in the books.
- Suspiciously Small Army: The season doesn't reach the big climactic battle in the book at Lugg Vale but regardless, the forces depicted onscreen never seem to exceed dozens at most.
