Anthony Head

Not long now until the BBC’s next big new blockbusting telefantasy behemoth beginneth. Merlin is the sort of thing that they advertise on bus sides and trail in cinemas. The sort of thing you imagine will be good. So with the benefit of having seen episode one, The Dragon’s Call, we should begin discussion on the next big Dr Who successor.

On paper, Merlin is a very good idea. It’s a well-known legend of completely British origin that nobody’s touched in aeons. Robin Hood did OK, but with so many other Robin Hoods clattering about in recent memory it just felt too "meh". But Young Merlin’s name alone just sounds cool. And boy wizards have, apparently, been popular among kids in recent years.

This new Saturday-night reboot is basically Camelot 90210. Or Smallville with spells. Or Buffy with boys (Slayer star Anthony Head even plays nasty King Uther Pendragon). Merlin adjusts to life as a wizard with a special destiny while navigating the minefield of puberty. We know the ending to this story, but the BBC want to show us how they get there. And it just might work.

Being a first episode, the plot, so much as there is one, is a flimsy caper memorable only for centring around the wonderful big-eyed Eve Myles. It’s really about setting up the universe. Merlin, as played by the confused-looking Colin Morgan, is essentially an Emo character (or perhaps a teenage gay one), tortured by a secret he can’t tell anyone and an ability he can’t use because magic is outlawed on the grounds that people used to do bad things with it. Merlin’s magic doesn’t seem so much more powerful than moving objects with his mind at this stage, but it does get handy in the many fight scenes with dumb jock Prince Arthur. Do we see where this is going?

Merlin knows he shares his special destiny with Arthur because a kindly dragon with the voice of John Hurt told him so. So they’re going to have to become "frenemies". The dragon, meanwhile, gets upstaged by Richard Wilson as Merlin’s bumbling mentor Gauis. The mystic opposite of Victor Meldrew, he looks set to be the soul of the series, while Kate McGrath’s Young Morgana will act as its (dark) heart.

Though they’re talking, cockily, about Merlin running for five seasons, whether the kids will take to what is basically a costume drama with dragons remains to be seen. As does whether they can improve the mainly awful dialogue sufficiently to keep the grown-ups interested.

It’s hard to understand what the BBC was thinking in scheduling its biggest new show of the autumn up against The X Factor. In the battle between the kindly dragon and Cheryl Cole, it is wide open…