The series is actually based on the books (graphic novels, maybe?) of two writers, otherwise one would have thought it the brain-child of a room of script-writers expressly hired by Netflix to come up with the Next Big Thing fantasy-wise, something that can be billed "the new Game of Thrones". I'm not that happy that every fantasy series now is supposed to ape Game of Thrones - I'd much rather see "the new Once Upon A Time" - but the occasional Game of Thrones-iness is not the problem. Indeed, I begin to see why GoT was so highly praised, if Cursed is the kind of dross fantasy fans usually have to contend with. There's a lot of blood, chopping off of limbs and nice side characters being killed off for shock effect (when a kindly lady gives the heroine a pep talk, I knew at once that she and her helpful husband were for it), but otherwise there are no noticeable links to the ambitious, knotty intrigues of GoT.
The main story of Cursed is simple enough. There is the heroine, Nimue, who is neither a dark sorceress and beguiler of Merlin (that would be awkward, seeing as he's her dad) nor the usually nice and pro-Arthur Lady of the Lake. (She is in a lake at one time, but only to kill enemies.) When she gets hold of a magic sword, it responds to her, and there's never any question of handing it over to Arthur - here a happy-go-lucky wannabe knight and love interest to Nimue who (mostly) doesn't mind playing second fiddle to her. Nimue belongs to the fey, a host of magical creatures who are hunted down and killed by evil monks. When her village is destroyed, her mother with her dying breath tells Nimue to get a magic sword the mother's been hiding to Merlin. When she finally meets Merlin, though, Nimue starts to question whether handing the sword over to this slippery customer is such a great plan. Instead, she holds on to it and becomes the leader of the poor, persecuted fey who - wouldn't you know it - have formed a Resistance. Only, the sword (never named as Excalibur, but plainly meant to be it) is coveted by the king and a rival pretender as it would shore up their claims to the throne. The evil monks aren't too fussed about the sword, except as a source of magic, but they want to burn Nimue and all of the good, noble, diversity-embracing close-to-nature fey, because the fey are different and the evil monks are basically Medieval-style Nazis.
I have seen many a weird take on the King Arthur story in my day, but none which strays so far from any resemblance to any Arthurian legend, at least any I'm familiar with. It's not that Cursed stands the usual stories on their heads - that has been done many a time - more that it's completely unrelated to the usual stories. The characters with names from the King Arthur story don't stand in any recognisable relation to one another. Arthur is not related to Uther Pendragon, and if he ever makes king it will have to be by default when all the kick-ass heroines are gone. Gawain, Percival and Lancelot have no connection to their Round Table counterparts - they're just important characters in the general scheme of things who for some reason have been named after the knights in question. Arthur's sister is called Morgana, and she does dabble in magic towards the end, but that's it. It's also worth noting that the Morgana Le Fey of legend in this series is one of the few good (so far) protagonists who are not fey. Here is an instance where the writers could have dispensed with the Arthurian name-dropping altogether and given the characters different names, and nothing would have changed. It's not as if magic swords and sorcerers can't exist outside of an Arthurian-legend context.
Even as its own thing, though, this series is bad. It's so simplistic it's laughable, and in love with its own wokeness in a way that will make few converts. Fantasy can include a great deal of warrior heroines and melting-pot casting without it seeming strange or programmatic - after all, in a magical make-believe land, anything goes, and you're not in any way restricted by historical facts from the "real world". Still, the self-congratulatory tone grates - "look, we have lesbian nuns, aren't we enlightened?" What bothered me most, though, was the treatment of the Big Bad - the evil monks, otherwise known as "red paladins".
Menacing monks and shady clerics are something of a mainstay of popular entertainment, and usually I don't mind it - you have to be able to separate the character from the faith. Normally, somewhere in the story, someone will make a little Cadfaelesque speech on how the churchy bad guys in question seem to have forgotten all about the Christian virtues of kindness and mercy etc., or it will be made clear in some other way that the fanatics have got the wrong end of the stick. I'm not sure firmly secular writers always feel very warmly about inserting this kind of "look, we're not saying all Christians are bad" parenthesis in their work, but it's a show of good manners. We get nothing of this in Cursed, though. Here, all Christians are bad, period. The red paladins are backed up by a (literally) pox-ridden Pope. There's a Mother Abbess at one time who doesn't give Nimue away (without giving a reason: here a Cadfaelesque speech would have slotted in nicely), but otherwise, the nuns that are helpful to her are those who aren't in fact pious at all. The only nun displaying signs of piety is a young girl who's a murderous nutcase. We have several scenes where characters pray before an altar and are troubled because they don't feel any response - Morgana, at the end of such a scene, throws away her cross and joins the fey, as if there has to be a choice of the one or the other. Peter Mullan as Father Carder, the head Evil Monk, does his level best, but he's given nothing to work with, as every religious speech he or any one else gives feels false and hollow. The writers clearly don't "get" religion, which is fine, but they would in that case have been on firmer ground had they invented a religious sect of their own to play the baddies (similar to the followers of "The Lord of Light" in Game of Thrones). Quite apart from religious allegiance, it's a problem when a story is unable to explain the driving forces of its villains. As a comparison, the moral system of the Star Wars films may be black and white, but Palpatine still makes a darn good case for the Dark Side.
There are good things in this series, such as the beautiful animated intro, some of the acting (the guy who plays Uther overacts painfully, though), and the way new plots and characters get thrown into the mix so as to liven things up a bit - a leper king, a pirate queen, a Viking pretender, a probably hostile old spirit taking over Morgana etc. I thought they tried too hard with making Merlin quirky and different at first, but he works well enough in the long run, and as a Swede I never object to seeing a Skarsgård as part of the cast. But if you want a popular-culture take on King Arthur and co., you're better off with Merlin (also on Netflix).
