Tag: Merlin

Here’s a wizard’s trick: Can “Merlin” get darker and stay light at the same time? It’s a question of tone and the obvious challenge for the SyFy series as its plots push into more sinister territory but the creative team tries to hold on to the humor that widens the show’s audience to an all-ages group. Here’s a look at an exclusive clip from the Feb. 13 episode, “A Servant of Two Masters,” which finds a bewitched Merlin acting as a reluctant assassin. I’ve written before that “Merlin” is a favorite in my house — it really is geared for family viewing — and apparently we’re not alone. The U.K. import is a hit at home (the finale of the fourth season aired on Christmas Eve to a record audience of 8.1 million) and it now has a foothold here with its biggest ...

Vampires and zombies may have invaded pop culture in 2011, but Monday marks the beginning of the lunar new year and, according to the Chinese zodiac, the year of the dragon. It’s a fitting title for a year that promises some screen time for the fire-breathing beasts of literature. J.R.R. Tolkien’s treasure-hording dragon Smaug is being brought to life in Peter Jackson’s upcoming films based on “The Hobbit.” Season 2 of the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones” shines a spotlight on Viserion, Rhaegal and Drogon, the baby dragons hatched by the exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. And the Syfy series “Merlin,” now in its fourth season, brings a new character to the King Arthur mythology: The Great Dragon Kilgharrah, whose complex relationship with Merlin, the last dragonlord, provides much ...

I have two kids —  a 13-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son — and our beloved Friday night tradition of ordering pizza and watching a movie is becoming more and more of a challenge. It’s just not easy to find a film that pleases all four members of a living-room audience with increasingly disparate tastes. And, because we’re not to a point where Pixar releases a new film every weekend, we’ve been turning to TV shows on DVD/Blu-ray for suitable fare. That’s how we came across “Merlin.“ If you don’t know about it already, “Merlin” airs on Friday nights at 10 p.m. on SyFy – there’s a new episode tonight, in fact, and you can watch a clip of it below – and it’s now in its third season here in the States. The show is a U.K. export (it’s in its fourth season on the other side of ...