The Winter King review: Arthurian legend gets a grim, bloody, satisfying makeover
Even without a round table or sword in a stone, this MGM Plus series casts an enchanting spell
TV Reviews The Winter King
The hunger for gritty fantasy that Game Of Thrones fed over eight seasons remains unsated to judge by House Of The Dragon and durable imitators such as The Witcher and The Wheel Of Time. Now comes a grim-tastic reboot of the medieval IP where it all began: Arthurian legend. Based on novelist Bernard Cornwell’s 1990s Warlord Trilogy, The Winter King introduces new (well, historical) place names and downplays magic in favor of psychology. Justifying its violence and doomy atmosphere through scenic location shots and root-worthy heroes, MGM+’s engrossing series, which premieres August 20, presents Arthur as a moody savior in a fallen world.
Just as GOT traced the evolution of chivalric values in a brutal realm where might makes right, The Winter King represents young Arthur’s effort to unite fifth-century Britain as an arduous and bloody quest, not necessarily guaranteed to succeed. (At least he doesn’t have to deal with ice zombies or dragons.) Over the first half of the 10-episode season, there is no Camelot, no knights at a round table, and zero Guinevere sightings. (She arrives in episode six.) As for the fabled sword in the stone, Excalibur turns up as a rusty, battered blade that Arthur discovers near his mother’s abandoned grave. Arthur becomes fascinated with the turquoise-hilted weapon, in effect processing his childhood trauma and turning it into strength.
In place of the traditional Arthurian story elements, we have Dumnonia (present-day Cornwall), ruled by High King Uther Pendragon (Eddie Marsan), whose castle stronghold is Caer Cadarn. From this subterranean labyrinth, Uther tries to repel advances by the rapacious Saxons while managing alliances with regional chieftains such as King Gorfydd (Aneirin Hughes) of Powys. Fifth-century England is splintered into hostile, constantly warring tribes. (Post-Brexit Britons and present-day Americans can relate.) After a humiliating defeat in battle against the Saxons, Arthur (Iain De Caestecker) brings home the body of Uther’s son, Mordred. Before the court, Uther beats the bastard Arthur to a bloody pulp before banishing him.
The divisions are not just over land and kingly succession; religious change is sweeping England, too. The old Druidic belief embodied by wise, gentle Merlin (Nathaniel Martello-White) and his protege Nimue (Ellie James) is being supplanted by Christianity, as preached by the goodhearted bishop Bedwin (Steven Elder). Merlin and Nimue live in Avalon, a utopian community that values equality and connection with nature—the sort of humanist values lacking in patriarchal hellholes like Caer Cadarn. Interestingly, you might think Christianity would be a force for peace in post-Roman Britain, but it’s cynically used as a decoy by faithless power mongers. Merlin’s magic is not so much supernatural as it is carefully staged. During a betrothal ceremony, a wooden bull hoisted over a fire belches smoke and white doves are released from hidden doors in its back.
Ultimately, The Winter King—elegantly scripted by Kate Brooke and Ed Whitmore and handsomely directed by Otto Bathurst—is about the sacrifice of personal happiness for the good of the nation. Arthur is the overachiever bastard son of an abusive father, banished by his horrible dad to Armorica (France), returning as leader of warriors who live by a code of honor. He is, then, a natural tactician born with a sense of justice. “You make others seem slow, sluggish,” Merlin tells him. “Nothing fosters enemies like envy.” Arthur doesn’t even pause to wash the blood caked on his face before dutifully galloping away from the homicidal Uther’s court.
En route to banishment, Arthur comes upon a village that has been raided and destroyed by the depraved Silurians. Amid the smoking ruins and corpses, he finds a death pit in which a young boy, impaled on a stake, moans. Arthur lifts the kid off the stake and takes him to Avalon to be treated by Merlin and Nimue. The youth survives and grows up to be Derfel (Stuart Campbell), another key player. (It’s never explained how Derfel got his Scottish brogue, but we’ll let that pass.) The young Saxon is sweet and sensitive and very much in love with Nimue, but finds himself drawn to a warrior’s life, for better or worse.
The first five episodes watched for this review are mostly concerned with the battle for the throne of Dumnonia. Uther’s daughter-in-law gives birth to the child who will one day be king, but upon touching the newborn Mordred’s club foot, Merlin has a dreadful vision. “I saw fire, slaughter, ruin,” the wizard explains. “The death of Britain. That child will do the Saxons’ bidding…only Arthur can stop him.” But Arthur has sworn to protect the child, even if that means his eventual defeat and death (but we’re getting ahead of ourselves).
For all its graphic bloodshed (which spares neither infants nor dogs), the series doesn’t glorify gore; the killing is full of terror and remorse. Derfel and the battle-hardened warrior Owain (Daniel Ings) carry out a botched raid on a tin mine, which becomes a chaotic carnage witnessed by a young girl in hiding. The second episode is especially gruesome, as the Silurians, led by the villainous Gundleus (Simon Merrells), use rape and pillaging to subdue the inhabitants of Avalon as he seeks his rival, the Edling (baby) king.
The cast is strong and characters dimensional as they face their various trials. Ellie James’ Nimue has a witchy intensity but also a vulnerability that grows after a terrible assault. Campbell’s Derfel is the innocent who learns the world is more corrupt than he ever imagined. And Iain De Caestecker shades what could have been a grim and resigned Arthur by introducing touches of humor and self-doubt. Playing Merlin as a serene shaman, Martello-White has natural charisma, but one wishes the writers had infused greater wit and flamboyance into him: more Gandalf and less Gandhi.
Carved as it is from three popular novels (which this reviewer has not read), the storytelling is meaty and well paced, with enough subplots and locations to hold your attention. James North’s production design takes us from dank, claustrophobic dungeons to beautiful vistas in southwest England and Wales, creating a believable sense of antiquity and scale. Although not to be confused with actual medieval history, The Winter King proves that you don’t need myth or magic to spin a mesmerizing epic, as fantasy benefits from a healthy dose of reality.
The Winter King premieres August 20 on MGM+
76 Comments
MGM Plusoh fuck off
I had never heard of it and refused to believe this was a thing, but apparently it was formerly known as Epix, which I actually have heard of (though am certainly not paying for).
MGM+ isn’t real. And I won’t hear otherwise.No company is that dumb to sell all their assets to another company and then think they can still have their own streaming service. That’s ludicrous.
MGM’s big sell-off was almost 50 years ago and it has built up an extensive library since through acquisitions and new productions.
Amazon bought MGM a little over a year ago.
Amazon is the parent company of MGM holdings, which is the parent company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, of which company MGM+ is a division. So it’s not clear which company you were referring to as having sold all their assets and still having its own streaming service.Whichever why you slice it, the company that owns MGM+ also owns an extensive collection of film and TV assets.
I remember MGM selling off several of their movies a little over 10 years ago. Off the top of my head, Cabin in the Woods and Red Dawn were notable examples at the time.
Yeah, I thought the streaming services were all consolidating now.
First world problems, yo.
Apparently it’s like HBO, and was actually a premium cable channel before becoming (of course) a streaming service.
Where did MGM get the money for that? They were financially troubled forever until Amazon bought them last year.
They had me at Iain De Caestecker and lost me at MGM+.
LMAO. I missed that this was on MGM+ until the last word of the review. I didn’t even know that was a thing and now I guess I’ll never see it until MGM+ fails and sells it to Netflix or whoever.
Apparently I get this for free with my cable package. More content to see me through the strikes.
MGM who?
I went and looked; apparently it’s available on Prime Video, as a free “bonus,” but that might just be the first episode. In any event, MGM+ is available as an add-on channel through Prime Video, so it’s not like you have to set up a whole separate account or use another app if you want to see that content. We’ve been getting Starz through Prime Video for several years (more accurately, for a couple months every couple of years, in order to watch one particular show).
i’m not objecting to another login or app per se, it’s more the increased balkanization of media properties. Cord cutting was a mistake.
What’s concerns you about that balkanization? More competition seems like a good thing, rather than all the content being in the hands of a few companies.
wtf is MGM+ lol
Hey, WTF, why didn’t I hear a word of this show coming out before this? I read the books ages ago and the first two of the trilogy are excellent. A pity that the quality dips a fair bit in the last one, but overall the books are still an excellent read. I hope that the show manages to live up to the source material. Not hugely fond of the change to Excalibur’s backstory, though; in the book Arthur got it as a gift from Merlin before the story even began and everyone sincerely believes that it’s a magic sword even though it never performs any actually magical feats.
I saw a trailer a few weeks ago, but I don’t think it was linked from here.
I believe they linked it over at io9
I think the first I heard of it was a week or two ago, no idea why it’s been flying so under the radar.
probably because this is on MGM+, and the streaming service that actually IS a streaming service, not just a made up name, also probably has a PR budget about as large as the one the publisher gave for these novels, lol.
Ah, so that’s what Fitz is up to now. It’s good to see Iain De Caestecker get a challenging starring role.
We’re currently watching the later seasons of Agents of SHIELD after the kid goes to bed and my god, does poor Leo Fitz go through some shit.
At least Nigel Tufnel’s getting acting work.
I think you mean David St. Hubbins
Oh shit, you’re right. I have offended the patron saint of quality footwear.
This sword goes to 11
Will definitely watch this when it arrives on a non-pretend streaming service!
Bold of you to dare hope it won’t get black-holed for a tax break before then.
I miss fun King Arthur stories.
Me too!
This. I feel like we’re overdue for a played-totally-straight King Arthur movie (we kind of got some of that with The Green Knight), without it being some kind of weird subversion or grimdark take.
“As for the fabled sword in the stone, Excalibur turns up as…”Apologies for the “well, actually…”, but the Sword in the Stone and Excalibur are actually two different swords. If I recall correctly, Arthur is told about the Lady in the Lake (who holds Excalibur and gifts it to him) after the Sword in the Stone breaks during a particularly harrowing duel he has with a vicious knight.
The multiple sword origin stories highlights how there’s a multiplicity of Arthur traditions, many of which contradict one another. And none of it was resolved satisfactorily, even with the publication of Crisis on Infinite Camelots.
I hope they have the scene where Merlin shows up in Arthur’s castle and tells him about the Round Table Initiative.
See, now I want Crisis on Infinite Camelots.
Kieron Gillen’s ‘Once and Future’ series is actually pretty much that.
Brythonic Cinematic Universe
Strange women in ponds, etc.
Moistened bints
Depends on the legend, but yes.
I’m just going to say that I think strange women in ponds handing out swords is an excellent basis for government.
At this point, I’m pretty sure I’d be willing to try it.
It’s a scimitar and just a model
OMG I feel like my whole life there’s been a sort of itch around the two sword stories and I never once considered there might actually be *two swords*. Thankyou!
LOL and I thought Henry Cavil’s wig was bad.
I’m glad this is getting good reviews, De Caestecker deserved so much after AoS he was incredible in that
Did they get rid of the “Old Derfel” framing device from the novels? Because I remember that being the most annoying part of the books, and something that really added little to them.
Probably not. From the IMDB synopsis: “A former warrior, now turned monk, tells the story of how Arthur became the lord of war despite the illegitimacy of his throne.”
It would have been fine if it had contributed something to the ending, a some sort of satisfying conclusion for the elderly Derfel storyline. Instead the ending didn’t even return to the framing device and gave very little justification for how that situation even came to pass in the first place.
I really liked Old Derfel from the books. It showed him as an old, broken down but sharp old guy. You had Sansum lording over him as opposed to being mocked. The payoff in the third book and where it ended up probably got a tear from me at the time. I thought it was all really well done.
The framing device itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it didn’t end up tying satisfyingly to the main narrative and didn’t have any sort of conclusion of its own. The ending was incredibly haphazard when it came to tying into the the situation of the framing device and there isn’t even an epilogue of old Derfel after finishing the manuscript.
It’s been something like 10 years since I’ve read the books, but didn’t the book end on old Derfel getting his weapons back from Sansum and going to fight the Saxons who were about to attack his monastery? I liked that ending – a guy who lived as a warrior would probably die as a warrior, just as he wanted.I need to re-read these books, they are awesome.
“you might think Christianity would be a force for peace…”No one familiar with history would think that.
Right? I emitted an involuntary chuckle of disbelief at that line.Tangentially, I always wonder how period pieces like this are at accurately depicting the period. I’m completely fine with changing things for the sake of drama, but I also appreciate it when fiction goes to lengths to get things right.If my understanding is correct, Arthur’s exploits are dated to somewhere around AD 500-550, give or take a few decades, which is barely post-Roman. People often think of and depict Arthur et. al. as being from the medieval era, probably because of media that uses imagery (architectural and armor/clothing styles) from that era.
The book is set in the late 5th or early 6th century, since St. Samson is a character (and not much of a saint). The familiar Arthurian characters and their Norman names are a visible anachronism which Cornwell freely admits, but overall the book tried to portray the post-Roman Britain accurately at least in the first book. Arthur doesn’t wear a knightly armour, but a Roman officer’s lorica squamata, his warriors are not knights since the Feudal system hasn’t yet formed, etc. Most Arthurian media uses High Medieval imagery since that’s when the Arthurian mythos was at its peak of popularity and the people of the era imagined Arthur’s time as similar to their own.
Le Morte d’Arthur was written in the Late Middle Ages, closer to our time than Arthur’s. And Merlin was not a Druid, nor meant to be one. There were no Druids, the Romans killed them all. And a world in which the Holy Grail is meant to exist is a very explicitly Christian world.
Yes, I am aware, nothing what you say contradicst my post. Though pre-Christian elements in the Arthurian mythos actually increased over the centuries, as people found the exotic and fascinating. Also, while the Romans wiped out the druids in the Celtic Britain, they continued to exist in Ireland, which the Romans never conquered. It’s unclear when they finally ceased to be.
I love Bernard Cornwell. I remember devouring these novels in high school. Time to re-visit the Sharpe novels maybe.
Just rewatched the Sean Bean BBC series of it, and am in the process of rereading now. Fookin’ Hakeswell!
Gone too soon! I am still bitter about Jane’s heel turn.
Sean Bean doesn’t die, not even once! Who could have guessed?
I love Bernard Cornwell. I remember devouring these novels in high school. Time to re-visit the Sharpe novels maybe.
Based on my favorite book of all time. Glad to hear it’s a pretty good production, may have to watch it someway without an MGM+ account… something… something….
Iain De Caestecker! I’d been hoping he’d pop up again and soon. He’s a goooood actor.
“Dumnonia (present-day Cornwall)”.Woo! Represent!
Hey now, y’all got Poldark that’s like the biggest historical fiction show (in the UK) of recent times, this side of Downton Abbey at least.
Color me shocked that this apparently isn’t terrible. I watched the trailer and immediately felt let down about a show I’ve waited 25 years to see. Now I can’t wait for Sunday. That said, it sounds like they’re going in a complete 180 on Book Merlin. He would have been fun to watch.
Interestingly, you might think Christianity would be a force for peace in post-Roman Britain, but it’s cynically used as a decoy by faithless power mongers. I would not and of course it is.
You got my hopes up. Don’t throw The Winter King in a title unless you’re talking about the 30 Years War.
“The old Druidic belief embodied by wise, gentle Merlin/”
So I know with this one sentence this adaptation has completely fucked everything up.
“the depraved Silurians”
Good to hear that the TV series does at least somewhat of justice to these books. The Arthurian trilogy is my favorite Bernard Cornwell book series, and I hoed they would be adapted ever since I’ve read about The Last Kingdom adaptation.So, Sharpe, The Last Kingdom and now The Winter King are adapted. It’s The Grail Quest’s turn now, I want to see the battles of Crecy and Poitier depicted on screen.
You don’t have to have read the novels, to have at least done enough research to know they were written by Bernard Cornwell, who also wrote the books that were the basis for The Last Kingdom, and for the old people, the Sharpe series starring Sean Bean, back in the day.