Review: Merlin 4.3: The Death Song of Uther Pendragon

Uther's back, and he's... he's covered in white makeup!

The position of Episode Three is forever cursed for me by its two predecessor stories, both of which came after two-parters of decent quality and both of which were absolutely terrible. Both were written by someone that I'm actually quite fond of, Howard Overman, and he's arrived here to try and fix his record and break the everlasting curse of the third episode. Whether he was fully successful I'm not sure, but The Death Song of Uther Pendragon was certainly better than its annular predecessors by many, many degrees and managed to be consistently enjoyable while only rarely resorting to crappy komedy. In fact, I'd even say that it was quite good. Wooo!
     Merlin and Arthur find a random old woman about to be burnt for Witchcraft, which Arthur doesn't think is very nice. He saves her, and in thanks she gives him, as a dying present, a magical Horn which lets him enter the Afterlife and speak to the dead. Since it's conveniently the anniversary of Uther's death, Arthur is sad and wants to have a natter with pop. He passes through the veil, and Uther, in typical Uther-y fashion, is a complete and total dick. Disillusioned, Arthur leaves, but finds afterwards that strange things are happening in the castle. Sir Percival is attacked from nowhere, Gwen is nearly set on fire - it turns out that Arthur has accidentally let Uther's ghost into the real world, and he's being a bigger dick than usual in order to "save" his kingdom. Faced with a choice between his father and his safety, he rightly chooses his safety and he and Merlin go to send Uther back to the afterlife. Arthur gets knocked out and Merlin takes the opportunity to beat Uther's ass with magic, but before it can be revealed to Arthur, he's sent back to the afterlife with a scream.
     Howard Overman, as history has shown, isn't good at comedy - at least in the style appropriate for Merlin (his Misfits stuff, on the other hand, is hilarious.) I got the feeling this episode that he wanted to make sure that we knew that the change he made last season (to kill Uther, which would have been awesome had he done it properly and not played it for comedy) was the right one. He did so by doing something very clever - exploiting the shitty characterisation of his colleagues, he showed us in no uncertain terms just what an unbridled asshole Uther really was. He hasn't really had to do much work at all, and that's the genius of it all - TDSoUP worked because it fit so perfectly with both the shambles that the series used to be and with the more adult version of itself that it is now.

Dr. Uther, or how Arthur Learned To Stop Worrying
And Love The Magic.

     I mean, this could have been another Goblin's Gold, what with the magical presence making things move magically and messing things up for everyone. But Overman took it and sorta mixed it with that other episode, The Wicked Day, and used lots of great characterisation to make it work. Under the surface, it could have been so formulaic, but it worked - for one, very important reason, that I hope Merlin's other writers have caught on to. It worked because effort was put into it. Because it had good character beats, good ideas and a well-laid foundation to work upon. Because this is Series Five, and this is important if your series is gonna be remembered well.
     The Death Song of Uther Pendragon wasn't perfect. But it was so much better than Overman's previous Third Episodes that it might as well be, in the same way that 0.9 recurring equals 1. It had Uther being incredibly consistent with his previous characterisation as a complete whazzock, and it seemed like this was the first time that the show actually acknowledged that fact. Overman's script was refreshingly open, honest and moving, and pushes the series in a direction that I'm liking very, very much.

Thanks.