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Spoilers for both book and show; I suggest you go back and read my review of the book if you want to know my thoughts on it as a standalone work.
Episode 1: Nimue
I did a Netflix watch party with Story to view this one and after some technical difficulties, it worked OK. The most annoying thing was we also had Discord running in the background so that we could chat aloud while we viewed the episode, and there ended up being quite a bit of echo as our microphones picked up the show as it played on our computers. If we do it again, will probably try to come up with another method, but in the meantime we will be watching separately.
On with the review!
Frankly, there really isn't much to contrast. Episode one is pretty much straight out of the book from our introductions to Nimue, Arthur and Merlin up until Nimue's village has been burned by the Red Paladins and she is confronted with a pack of wolves while wielding the mysterious sword her dying mother gave her. This isn't too surprising given that the book pretty much existed only to be made into a Netflix series as part of the relentless pursuit of the next Game of Thrones; there really wouldn't be one without the other.
We do get a couple of tantalizing glimpses of the end of the book where Nimue has been riddled with arrows and is floating in water as our opening scene. This is an interesting slight change to what is being used as the “hook” for the story entire, as the book begins with Nimue's village getting destroyed and then goes back and introduces everyone. Other than showing us that brief shot of what one assumes will be the end of Season One, episode one of the show puts everything back in chronological order. It's an interesting choice that different flash-forwards are used as the openings, but still the same basic technique of introducing an event one assumes will be explained later in order to grab and hold your attention.
The show seems to be set much more firmly in a fantasy universe and not in any semblance of a historical time and place, as I suspected it would, and it is better for it. Place names are so far less important than they were in the book. I hope this continues, as one of my major gripes about the book was it couldn't quite seem to decide whether it wanted to be in a purely fantasy realm with made-up location names or a quasi-historical medieval Europe with familiar location names that nevertheless bore no resemblance to their actual positions on a real map. I really hope the show has just decreed we're in fantasyland and stays there rather than trying to have it both ways.
The other major thing to comment on when talking about the book versus the show is of course that the characters are being interpreted by actors. So how are they doing? Most of the characters in the show are pretty much how they are described in the book, at least in terms of personality and behavior. Katherine Langford's Nimue is headstrong and impulsive. She hates being treated as a freak by the rest of her village except for a few personal friends who like her despite her oddities and how careless of others she can be when she gets the bit between her teeth and her bullheaded stubbornness takes over. She longs to escape and see the world as her friend Gawain did. Devon Terrell's Arthur is charming, mildly roguish, and more worldly than Nimue but still a little naive. His black skin versus her white skin is pretty much irrelevant, as this is shown to be a comfortably multi-race world, at least in terms of the cast's skin colors. (There are no remarks about “moors” or any other archaic terms for black people used.) The pair are obviously attracted to each other. Father Carden is both grandfatherly and sinister. King Uther is blustering and inept. The biggest liberty taken from the book is Gustaf Skarsgard as Merlin. He has all of the characteristics of his book counterpart—constantly drunk, annoys the shit out of everyone, a consummate manipulator, and is trying desperately to keep people from realizing he's lost his magic. Skarsgard has added some personal flair; instead of coming across as a bitter, brooding combination of Tyrion Lannister and Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish from Game of Thrones, he's more akin to Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow if he were in Game of Thrones instead of sailing the high seas. It's not what I was expecting (Story is delighted because she loves Jack Sparrow) but it's a legitimate take on the character.
Will I continue? I am still not sold on watching the entire series. I wasn't overly fond of the book—it was too violent for a YA title, and the ending in particular soured me on it as a whole, despite some of the things it did well—and as faithful as the show is being to the book I don't hold out much hope I will like the show any better. Story is going to continue, as the show's first episode made a much better impression on her than it did on me—but then she didn't read the book. We'll see how she feels as she makes her way forward, and whether I can muster the wherewithal to continue despite being pretty sure I know what's coming.
Stay tuned.
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