Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140420094458/@comment-24785400-20140423231000

You may be right there Machairdorus, and the showrunners certainly did refer to Smallville as their template a number of times. Especially as they said that in the end they actually thought about not doing a reveal because "it wasn't important"

You reminded me of an article I read a  little while ago (even though it's not new). The author was talking about how he felt when a screen-writing mate (Jake Mitchie) told him of their idea to re-do the legends.

''A few years ago, my at-the-time-quite-impoverished screenwriter friend Jake Michie told me about this brilliant new children’s TV series he’d dreamed up about the Knights of the Round Table. All the male leads would be young and pretty with boy band haircuts; Arthur would be a bit of a rugger-bugger lunk, while the real hero would be a younger Merlin who would use his magic to get his pal out of all sorts of scrapes; and obviously there’d be monsters and demons and suchlike to stop the kids getting bored.'' (full article http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/television/7027083/stuff-of-legend/ for those interested.)

It seems they could never really get out of that sort of story-line, even though things got changed a bit, Merlin was always hiding in the shadows saving the day and always playing the fool, Arthur was our designated Hero. It never seems to have occurred to them to break the cycle and move things along.