The Series
3/5
Coming off the success of their naughty and action-fueled historical series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the Starz network was ready to dive into a different arena, fantasy, and take on powerhouse HBO and their new fantasy costume drama Game of Thrones head on. What better subject to tackle than the legend of King Arthur and Camelot? When I first heard of Starz’ plans to reinvent Camelot, I was cautiously optimistic. This story has been done may times over, with varying degrees of success, but mostly with failure. It didn’t take long to realize that Starz’ new series would fall into the failure category.

An ill-conceived, under-budgeted fantasy/drama that unfortunately miscast one its pivotal characters, nay, the pivotal character, Arthur (Jamie Campbell Bower), Camelot would start off slow and become an anachronistic take on the Arthurian legend. Walking a thin line between authenticity and contemporary political correctness, what we were given was a multicultural land with “modern” women and a feeble boy king unconvincing in any way that he would one day become the great legend to unite a people.

The lopsidedness of the casting is so horrendous, that those playing Morgan (Eva Green), Arthur’s shape-shifting sister who is after his throne, Merlin (Joseph Fiennes), the sorcerer at Merlin’s side with foreboding visions of the kingdom to come, and Igraine (Claire Forlani), Arthur’s biological mother cast out from her home by the evil Morgan upon King Uther’s death, all outshine everyone else; they could be a series unto themselves with Arthur a tertiary character.

Still, there are a few good twists to the classic tale in Camelot such as how Arthur recovers the sword in the stone, a remaining of the Lady in the Lake and the naming of Excalibur that finds Merlin at pains over the death of a little girl due to his use of sorcery and more. It’s still just not enough to overcome the many weak.

Video quality
3.5/5
The limited budget of this series shows in a lot more ways than one when it comes to the image quality for this 1080p/24 AVC encodement of Camelot. Not only do some of the visual effects look obviously fake, but the high definition imagery is somewhat low contrast and heavy with video noise in many darkly lit scenes. This leads to a softening of detail and distracting artifacts that take away from what is meant to be elaborate set and costume designs. On the positive side, flesh tones look good and colors are generally strong and natural, even if blacks tend towards the greyish side.

Audio quality
4.5/5
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is the true strength of this release. Form the chatter of townsfolk in Camelot to the clanking of swords, this mix surrounds listeners in a cohesive and dynamic soundfield, with deep and tight lows, easy highs, and clean dialogue.

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Camelot received middling reviews from critics and had somewhat ho-hum ratings, averaging less than a million viewers per episode. The lavish series also had trouble generating much buzz after it launched alongside HBO’s breakout fantasy Game of Thrones and Showtime’s better-reviewed historical drama The Borgias. Starz’ genre fans can at least look forward to the upcoming Torchwood and the return of Spartacus next year.

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Happy b-day to this amazing woman and actress!!