Cursed Season 1 Review: Netflix's Arthurian Fantasy Is Doomed

Cursed season 1 review: a good idea buried under its own plot

Cursed arrived on Netflix on July 17, 2020, with all ten episodes released at once. It is based on the 2019 graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller and Tom Wheeler, who also executive-produced the series, and it retells the Arthurian legend from the side of Nimue, a young Fey woman who becomes the Lady of the Lake. Katherine Langford plays her, Devon Terrell is Arthur, and Gustaf Skarsgård is Merlin.

The pitch is good. Nimue carries the Sword of Power toward Merlin while a religious militia, the Red Paladins, hunts her people. The show lines up strong female characters, a genuinely surprising version of the old legend and plenty of good intentions. The execution is where it stumbles. Too much of Cursed feels awkward and forced, and a pile of meandering storylines pulls it away from whatever it set out to be at the start.

Ironically, the show finds its stride in the middle. Episodes five and six, built around Merlin and Nimue, are the high point of the season. The rest of the run never quite matches them, and the final episodes fizzle where they should land. The short version of this Cursed season 1 review: watch it for the look and the middle stretch, and expect little else.

Early on, the broad verdict forms fast: lovely to look at, hard to follow and strangely hard to care about.

It is beautiful

The best thing Cursed has going for it is its visual design. Color and costume feel vibrant, and the show builds its medieval world with confident set pieces: aerial shots of castles, overgrown forests and big visual spectacles. Production sets were built on disused Army land at Deepcut in England, and the money shows.

The tone sits in an unusual place. This is not a gritty Game of Thrones, and it is not a pure fairy tale either. The relationship melodrama skews young adult, while the violence reaches Game of Thrones levels of gore. Nudity is minimal, yet the blood spatters are not. The animated transitions between scenes look lovely and often jar, and they sharpen the question of who the show is made for, adults or teens.

Who is who in Camelot

The show's cleverest trick is casting familiar names in unfamiliar clothes. The brooding Weeping Monk, played by Daniel Sharman, turns out to be Lancelot, and Matt Stokoe's Green Knight is Gawain. Sister Iris belongs to the Red Paladin order and has one of the season's more unsettling arcs, and Sebastian Armesto plays Uther, the king whose claim becomes yet another thread to keep track of.

Spotting the legends in disguise gives the first half of the season a game-like pull. It is a decent twist, and it lets a viewer who knows the old tales feel clever. The trouble starts when the twist has to carry story weight, because the show treats the reveal as a payoff and then runs out of things to do with it.

It is confused

Like its heroine, the show cannot decide what it wants to be. The early episodes introduce the characters and send Nimue on a quest to return the sword to Merlin. Then that goal is dropped for exposition and flashbacks, and the best of them is Merlin's story. The Green Knight and the Fae arrive next, followed by new motivations, new factions and, oddly, political intrigue. The show changes direction as often as it adds a plot point.

Nimue herself is the clearest case. She is cursed with magical ability, inherits a cursed blade, becomes a summoner and finally embraces being queen of the Fae. Along the way she turns down the heroine role repeatedly, only to have it forced on her again. She is a gifted spellcaster who refuses to use her gift for fear of the curse, and a poor swordfighter, which is a hard combination in a war story. When she is not flirting with Arthur, he is saving her, despite her being far more powerful.

The result is a lead who fails upward, with talent and presence that the writing wastes. By the end, the series has little to do with Nimue's destiny as the Lady of the Lake, and the point of her journey is hard to name. It simply stops.

It has too many subplots

A short list shows the problem. A Viking ice king turns up in Camelot, and nobody explains the exact power of the Sword of Power or the identity of the Red Spear. Morgana has done something. The Widow might be a banshee, a ghost or a necromancer. Sister Iris is angry, then apparently a holy ninja. The Pope and Rome are in it, Merlin may have committed genocide against humans, and the Red Paladins carry on with theirs against non-humans.

That is not all. There is Uther's claim to the throne, the second curse on Excalibur layered over Nimue's, the fate of the town of Graimere, the resolutions for the Weeping Monk and the Green Knight, the future of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's love triangle. At some point, a viewer simply stops tracking. The gist of the series happens in four or five episodes, and the rest adds conflict that does not matter.

It is conveniently bad

Plot holes and lapses of logic pile up. Deaths drag on in stretched melodrama meant to build tension, and some land as unintentional slapstick. Villains hold back for no reason, and in other scenes people who should be spared die for equally random ones. Iris and Uther are the clearest examples. The bad guys are stereotypical genocidal types, and the dialogue leans on cliche.

A fair shorthand for the experience is Game of Thrones in its weaker seasons, with the subplots standing in for the White Walkers. The ending adds one more oddity. Everyone survives, and each gets a new title that sets up adventures the show would never film.

Cursed at a glance: cast, episodes and numbers

• Release: all ten episodes on Netflix on July 17, 2020.
• Source: the 2019 graphic novel Cursed by Frank Miller and Tom Wheeler, published by Simon & Schuster.
• Cast: Katherine Langford (Nimue), Devon Terrell (Arthur), Gustaf Skarsgård (Merlin), Daniel Sharman (the Weeping Monk), Sebastian Armesto (Uther), Lily Newmark (Pym) and Peter Mullan (Father Carden).
• Reception: Rotten Tomatoes reported 67 percent positive from 52 reviews, and Metacritic gave it 59 out of 100 from 13 reviews.
• Status: Netflix canceled the series on July 9, 2021, after one season.

Is Cursed worth watching? The verdict

Only if the look sells it. The biggest payoff of Cursed is the reveal of who is who in the Arthurian legend: many of the people met along the way turn out to be figures from the old tales, and spotting them is fun. It is a decent twist, but not one that can carry a whole series. Do not expect a payoff for the twist beyond the fun of spotting it.

A reviewer rewatching the pilot because nothing registered the first time is not a good sign, and this one did exactly that. The curse itself, the thing that should give the story its malice, is overshadowed by a second coincidental curse, and the show has no clear goal. Nimue's struggle never sells it. That is why fan reactions soured, while critics landed at decent at best. Put plainly, the series asks for ten hours of attention and returns about five hours of story.

Still, the Merlin episodes in the middle are worth the trip, and Skarsgård's version of the wizard is the best argument for the series. Watch those, watch it for the scenery, and expect to be left disappointed by the finish. As it turned out, the show got no second season, which makes its open ending the most frustrating thing about it.

For viewers weighing a watch, the useful comparison is length. Ten episodes is a heavy commitment for a story that needs five, and the Merlin material alone makes a better movie than the whole season makes a show. Fans of Frank Miller's graphic novel will see the bones of the book, and readers of the Arthurian cycle will enjoy the reshuffled cast. Everyone else should treat it as an expensive-looking curiosity.

Netflix canceled the series on July 9, 2021, after one season, so the open ending never gets answered. Viewers who start it should treat the first season as a self-contained, flawed curiosity.

Sources

• Cursed (2020 TV series), Wikipedia — cast, crew and series details