Merlin: Sweet Dreams

The rulers of The Five Kingdoms of the land are gathering at Camelot to negotiate, and sign, a peace treaty but wicked King Alined (David Schofield) is determined to sabotage the conference for his own - vague - reasons.

He employs his magically-inclined jester Trickler (the ever creepy Kevin Eldon) to enchant first Arthur (Bradley James) and then the Lady Vivian (Doctor Who's Georgia Moffett) to fall in love with each other.

The rude and haughty Vivian is the daughter of the over-protective King Olaf (Mark Lewis Jones), who doesn't take kindly to anyone showing any romantic interest in his virginal daughter.

Sweet Dreams rapidly develops into a wonderful farce, with confessions of love being directed to the wrong target, people being whisked in and out of bedrooms etc and if it wasn't for the emotional hurt that Gwen (Angel Coulby) suffers, this would have been one long uproariously comedy episode.

Gwen, unfortunately, receives a love note and flowers from Arthur (by mistake) and finally believes he has overcome the social barriers separating them and professed his true feelings. Sadly when she learned that Arthur was to fight Olaf to the death for the honour of Lady Vivian you could see Gwen's heart breaking on the screen.

The duel between king and prince was excellent - the stunt team on Merlin deserve some recognition for their wonderfully choreographed fight scenes - but it was the kiss between Arthur and Gwen, to break the enchantment, that had me grinning from ear-to-ear like a teenaged Twihard sitting through a screening of New Moon.

While there may have been some minor plot holes in Sweet Dreams, it was - without a doubt - the strongest and cleverest episode of the show to date with outstanding performances, again, from Bradley James and Angel Coulby as the star-crossed lovers.

It was good to see their romance, although still on the QT, slowly developing in a very touching and tender way - while at the same the bromance between Prince Arthur and Merlin (Colin Morgan) goes from strength to strength.

Although Sweet Dreams did feature a crucial appearance by The Great Dragon (voiced by John Hurt), the story proved that you don't need a big, CGI monster for Arthur and his men to fight to make a strong episode of Merlin.

I hope King Alined and his jester are allowed to return later as recurring villains - as Trickler proved a worthy foil for Merlin's magic.

Kudos to Lucy Watkins for writing such a splendid tale; if only Merlin was this good every week.

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