Merlin: The Nightmare Begins

With an episode title so obviously primed for ridicule, I will avoid the easy jibes about the nightmare beginning with the first season and simply say that with The Nightmare Begins I think Merlin might have turned a corner.

While still a little way off great yet, this episode was a strong character piece concentrating on the oft-overlooked Morgana (Katie McGrath), who has really only been a background player so far this season.

King Uther's ward accidentally set fire to the drapes in her room by a subconscious use of her magic, which is clearly defined as a kind of X-Men-like mutant power in the world of Merlin.

Uther (Anthony Head), is adamant that she is the target of magical attacks and so orders one of his Casablanca style round-ups of the usual suspects (e.g. suspected witchcraft practitioners and those believed to consort with druids).

Morgana confides in Gaius (Richard Wilson), but his solution is just to keep "drugging" her with sleeping draughts; however Merlin (Colin Morgan) reckons the druids will be able to help her and finds outb where they are camped.

Morgana slips away in the night to visit the druids - doing a very good Red Riding Hood impression and managing to get attacked by a legion of juicy giant scorpions on the way - but Uther believes she has been kidnapped and sends Arthur (Bradley James) and his men after her... with orders to "take no prisoners".

Merlin manages to beat Arthur and his posse to the druids, who have already told Morgana that she has "magic" and that it can be a "force for good".

What follows is rather odd though, we have Arthur and his troops charging willy-nilly into a camp of magically-adept druids, but none of them actually use any magic... they simply run away.

In a sense the druids are the only real let-down of this episode, they're not the spelled-up hippy anarchist collective we'd been hoping for. Their charismatic leader Aglain (Colin Salmon), was written out all too suddenly and easily - surely a character like that is worth keeping around? Even if he didn't actually do any magic!

On the other hand, Merlin gets to use a lot of magic this episode - from the trivial to the large scale - for a change; and he meets up again with the wonderfully creepy young Morded (Asa Butterfield) from last seasons The Beginning Of The End (one of the stronger episodes from season one).

Not only is it fantastic to see the show drawing on story elements from earlier episodes, shattering the slight illusion that each is a self-contained entity and that there is actually some narrative flow through the whole show, but it's actually beginning to suggest that there might even be some kind of metaplot falling into place that we are just now seeing glimpses of.

I don't want to get my hopes up because, even so, the status quo was still restored at the end of the episode, even though Morgana now has a better idea of who she is (for example, the Great Dragon tells Merlin not to have anything to do with "the witch") and the trailer for the next episode - Lancelot And Guinevere - suggests that more characters from last season are returning.

And the budding romance of Gwen and Arthur, started so tantalising last week, might even be further developed.

Perhaps, as Primeval did so well, Merlin's second season - and any that follow - will actually continue to improve drastically. I'd just like to see an episode end with a cliffhanger for once, rather than this continual need to wrap everything up in 45 minutes and get everyone back to square one.

Next week: