Camelot's adult content shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has seen other lurid period dramas, such as Spartacus.
What might come as a surprise is Camelot's relative restraint. This is an earnest, and occasionally dreary, retelling of the Arthur legend.
It's a tale of sibling rivalry between Arthur (Jamie Campbell Bower), initially unsuspecting heir to an English throne, and his half-sister Morgan (Eva Green), who believes the throne is rightfully hers, and who killed her father as part of her quest to get it.
Camelot is hampered by a weak Arthur in Bower, a veteran of the Twilight series. It's one thing for him to be portraying a callow, youthful Arthur; it's quite another for him to look like he walked off a 1976 Peter Frampton album cover, and he's not really credible as he tries to show more gravity.
He does get one great moment, though, when Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, although director Ciaran Donnelly overdoes the slow-motion in a scene that is thrilling enough without visual gimmickry.
The series' high points belong to Green as the wicked Morgan and to Joseph Fiennes playing Merlin.
Fiennes may rely too much on one expression - a sort of half-scowl combined with a wry smile - but when Merlin and Morgan get going, the wizardry brings a magic (artistic and otherwise) that's otherwise missing. Tamsin Egerton provides some eye candy as Guinevere, whose illicit trysts with Arthur fuel part of the main plot.
Camelot was created by Michael Hirst, who also wrote The Tudors and The Borgias, which has a lot in common with Camelot. Both series feature a central character whose rise comes after a leader's death.
Both feature elaborate coronation scenes. Both have baroque poisonings, femmes fatale, family divisions, and people who want to knock the central characters off their lofty perches. Both have a lot of characters speaking in British accents.
What Camelot doesn't have, and sorely needs, is Jeremy Irons, who dominated The Borgias as Rodrigo Borgia, who through bribery and cajoling became Pope Alexander VI.
Irons is a great actor who is aware that sometimes a project calls for great bad acting, and he not only chewed the scenery in The Borgias, he savoured it.
• Camelot screens on SoHo at 8.30pm on Saturdays and again at 7.30pm on Wednesdays.
- Robert Philpot
