Atlantis - The Earth Bull and A Girl By Any Other Name

So, this weekend I got caught up on a couple of shows. More on Episode 2 of Agents of SHIELD later; first, Atlantis.

Taste the cheese!

Merlin was a bit of a surprise hit for the BBC, I think. They obviously had some hopes for it, but I suspect that they never really envisaged it lasting five series. Remarkable then that the makers seem to have chosen when to end it, with their final season of ever-increasing doom (which I still need to catch the end of, IPlayer desktop having failed me on that and Being Human, but it is doubtless that which positioned them to pitch the replacement series Atlantis.

In short, a young man named Jason is searching for his missing father, lost while exploring the ocean depths in a submarine. During a dive, he is draw helplessly into a bright light and awakens on the shores of an island, dominated by the mighty - if slightly underwhelming - city of Atlantis, which he of course believed was a myth. The city stirs memories, even as he encounters names he knows well - Pythagoras and Hercules, as well as the Minos family - in a world out of step with history, yet filled with mythology.

The opening episode sees Jason face off against the Minotaur, after taking Pythagoras' place as sacrifice (I was, I should say, deeply disappointed at his failure to leap forward and declare 'I volunteer as tribute'), only to learn that the cursed monster was once a man who knew his father, and that his true identity is a source of deadly danger to him. In the second episode, A Girl by Any Other Name, a rescue mission takes an unexpected turn as Jason and co rescue a girl named Medusa from the clutches of the bloodthirsty Maenads.

Where I always viewed Merlin as a story taking place in a post-Apocalyptic recreation of Camelot, Atlantis is openly crossworlds, with the Oracle (Juliet Stevenson, bringing some serious thespian muscle to the proceedings) telling Jason that his old world (the modern day) and the world of Atlantis are but two of many. Of course, it could just be a form of purgatory, where a disheveled and unreconstructed Hercules helps dying archaeologists to 'go to the tavern' and so pass on, but currently I'm not putting money on that.

So, it's not Greek mythology, just something very like it. Okay; I'll buy it. Thousands wouldn't.

As hard as I try to avoid comparisons, there are a number of similarities to Merlin in the basic set up. A hard, unforgiving monarch (although currently Alexander 'Genre Credibility' Siddig's Minos is looking positively fluffy next to Sarah Parish as Queen Pasiphae), and a bromance (apparently already known as Python) between an awkward, brilliant geek and a natural warrior. The decision to change up and make Jason the outsider-hero, with the adorkable Pythagoras as the deuteragonist, is the big shift. Jason also has access to secrets, as Merlin did, with the Oracle as his thespian Dragon and the pervy clothes-removing gateway between the worlds in place of magic, although the latter at least has not yet been given much relevance, besides his familiarity with the square on the hypotenuse and an ability to weird out satyrs. I hope to see more of it later, and if he hasn't built a tank by the end of the series, I will be very sad.

Now, unfortunately, Jason brings a lot of Arthur's traits to the series: he's tough, he's manly, he's a bit of a dish, and he's about as interesting as woodchip. Jack Donnelly isn't a bad actor, so much as an actor with not much to work with. I am also unconvinced by his supposedly incredible physical abilities, so far shown with a less-than-superlative bit of jumping, a little parkour-lite and an arrow dodge. On the plus side, there is a convincing natural chemistry with Ariadne (Aiysha Hart), if only because she is equally dull. Bereft of the spotlight, Robert Emms' Pythagoras is lovely, but so far a bit of a cypher, leaving the star turn - at least among the central group - to Mark Addy's drunken has-been Hercules.

Overall, the series has been a bit of a sausage fest so far, and it remains to be seen if any of the other female roles - Pasiphae, Ariadne, Medusa - will ever manage to be as interesting as the Oracle.

I am sold enough to keep watching, for a while at least, but I can't really say more than that, and I am less inclined to give it the leeway of a new series than I am with, say, Agents of SHIELD, by which token I suppose I can say that it has won my interest, but not my indulgence.