Hello! Thank you!
I actually don’t have a problem with something not loyal to the legends. I enjoyed the new King Arthur movie a lot and I just watched a movie where Morgana and Mordred use alien technology to defeat Bangkok’s residents descendants of arthurian knights- and it was great!
My main problem is actually the opposite. I loved Merlin BBC first season because everything was new and different, but to me it felt like they had to force the ‘famous’ arthurian themes on the show, later on. There was no need to turn Morgana into a villain (not that I didn’t enjoy it, but it seemed a bit of an extrem turn when you rewatch the first season), and absolutely no need to put random knights with no back story, or to have Lancelot and Guinevere have their affair, or even to get to Camlann. It felt to me that they shaped the characters they introduced to get the famous bits of legends- ending up with a lot of contraddictions.
I would have enjoyed more a show less constricted by these arthurian milestones (’Morgana has to be evil’, ‘Morgana is Arthur’s sister’, ‘Mordred is a villain’, ‘Guinevere cheats on Arthur’, ‘the Fisher King’, ‘Arthur dies at Camlann’) and more about developing the characters and the stories in the shows (what about the dragon? what about Arthur actually rethinking the magic ban instead of rushing it in the last seconds? What about episodes about the other knights?).
Arthurian Legends 