winner55 This three hour film is presented in two distinct parts - and I mean very distinct.The first part is actually rather charming in a dumb TV fantasy sort of way; Sam Niell is very winning as Merlin, and the story has some neat twists and turns, some predictable, but one or two unexpected; certainly we are left hanging over what might possibly have destroyed Camelot and erased its connection with the Holy Grail.But the second part - my God!, this is bad! Slow, completely predictable, a mind-numbingly ridiculous happy-ending, wretchedly hammy acting, a script that no longer remembers it's set in the Middle Ages, fight-scenes that are meaningless even when not confusingly disjointed - no one could imagine a worse second-half of any movie or TV series.So how the heck did it get imagined? My guess is, they started with half a script, got paid up front for the second half and decided, 'screw it, we got the money, let's take a vacation'. Either that or they just went suddenly psycho half-way through production.Don't share that fate (or mine, who wastefully kept watching, expecting - hoping - that something interesting might happen). Avoid this tripe at all costs.

tribblechomper Completely tossing out the window the events of the original miniseries, as well as the reasons Merlin did what he did, this execrable excuse for a quasi-sequel sucked like a vacuum cleaner on hyperdrive.Miranda Richardson repeating as The Lady In The Lake, good; looking like Queen Mab in her golden years (instead of the albino-white of the miniseries), and having placed a spell on Merlin so he slept (while she essentially raped him) 50 years...? I really wanted to like this (and yes, I saw both parts, and the featurette), but this was just too horrid for words!

ozthegreatat42330 I enjoyed this one because it goes into an area almost never touched on, what happens after Arthur and the fall of Camelot. While the humor of Merlin (especially Martin Short) was not in as great a supply, it still had the story to tell. It did seem to me that the leader of the raiders was trying to emulate Arnold Schwartzenegger in his Conan days, and taken with Merlin, it was not the best casting for Miranda Richardson to play the Lady of the lake, since she was queen Mab before. I would have liked for Sam Neill to have had more screen time, but there was an excellent story here, and you were never really sure of the outcome until the very end. It is not quite as good as "Merlin" but still, all in all, very watchable. If you really want a good Arthur miniseries then have someone film the four books of Mary Stewart's Arthur and Merlin saga.

lesandarah Honestly, I was so disappointed in this, I nearly screamed. I am a huge fan of HE's 'Merlin,' and when I found how they completely butchered the characters and story lines, I wanted to tear my hair out.Take the Lady of the Lake for example. In 'Merlin,' she was a graceful, blonde goddess who watched over her lake and the waters of Britain. No more. Now they've stuck her with a strange voice and black hair. Do they think she is Mab (from 'Merlin')? She is obviously not. She and Mab had the entire Ying/Yang effect, and now it's like she's been pulled over to the Dark Side. May the force be with you, Lady, and give you back your old hairstyle.And the Lady being Jack's mother? It was a pointless, idiotic thing to do, especially since Merlin is her father. It was just a plot device that must somehow been meant to trigger a serious plot point... But it didn't. It was stupid and unnecessary. Why couldn't Jack have been Merlin's son with Nimue, huh? And I thought Merlin specifically stated at the end of 'Merlin,' after making Nimue and himself young again, that it was the end of magic, and that there was NO MORE. In this, we find both Jack and him doing magic in CAMELOT, which is a Christian community, and thinks of magic as BLASPHEMY.Ugh. This wasn't worth watching. I demand my twenty dollars back.