‘The Winter King’ Review: MGM+’s King Arthur Series Struggles to Hit That ‘Game of Thrones’ Sweet Spot

The first time we see Arthur (Iain De Caestecker) in MGM+’s The Winter King, he looks nothing like the wise and noble ruler of myth. He looks, in fact, a right mess: eyes bulging, jaw slack, forehead black with blood. As the camera zooms out of the close-up, we see he’s clutching his brother’s corpse in the middle of a battlefield, so shaken he can hardly find his own legs to stand.

It’s the last time he’ll look quite so nakedly vulnerable, at least in the five hour-long episodes sent to critics (of a ten-episode season). Elsewhere, this Arthur falls much closer to the strong, shrewd warrior we’ve come to expect from centuries of tellings and retellings. But despite, or perhaps because of, the enormous shadow cast by his legend, The Winter King only truly comes alive in scenes like that opener — ones that cast aside the grand and epic in favor of the raw, the intimate, the human.

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That The Winter King has too few of these is not for lack of trying. Adapting Bernard Cornwell’s books, creators Kate Brooke and Ed Whitmore strip away the tales’ most fanciful aspects — the exalted Excalibur becomes a shabby forgotten blade, albeit one spotlighted with indulgent lens flare — and ground its characters in a more plausible historical context. In this telling, Arthur is an unloved bastard son exiled from his home land of Dumnonia by his father, the High King Uther (Eddie Marsan), only to return years later to protect Uther’s new heir, Arthur’s half-brother Mordred. And Arthur’s path is just one of several. Intersecting with his arc are those of Nimue (Ellie James), a young druidess, and Derfel (Stuart Campbell in a terrible blond wig), an aspiring warrior, both orphans watched over by Merlin (Nathaniel Martello-White) in the idyllic hamlet of Avalon.

With its combination of geopolitical maneuvering, brutal violence and sparingly used magic, The Winter King fits tidily into the still-steady stream of Game of Thrones imitators (though technically, the books that both series are based on came out about the same time). And like most of the others, including actual Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, its attempts to replicate that formula only confirm how unique the original was. The new series is not without charms, chief among them a solid core cast. But a rocky start is bound to lose some potential fans before they get to them.

Early episodes struggle to strike a balance between the sweeping scale of inter-kingdom wars in the fifth century and the more personal journeys of its lead characters. Its clumsy solution is lots of expository dialogue to explain everything from Dumnonia’s waning strength against the invading Saxon forces to just how smart everyone agrees Arthur is. The sheer amount of ground being covered — the premiere, directed by Otto Bathurst, spans eight years — forces the series to sprint through plot points that might benefit from some breathing room. If a previously healthy-looking major character starts coughing, you can bet he’ll be dead within minutes.

Once the table-setting is out of the way, though, The Winter King is able to slow down enough to find its own groove. Promising themes begin to take shape around the third episode, like the tension between traditional paganism and newfangled Christianity, or the weight of destiny. For all of Merlin’s confidence as he instructs Nimue on the will of the gods, he finds himself defying them when his heart demands it; for all the characters’ skepticism of the old ways, they still turn to ancient rituals (up to and including human sacrifice) for the moments that matter most.

The characters come into greater focus, too. The bond between Nimue and Derfel supplies much of the emotion in the first half of the season, as a traumatic event pits Nimue against Arthur and leaves Derfel caught between his closest friend and his greatest hero. The specifics of the plot are familiar, but James brings a visceral rage to Nimue that feels impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, Arthur’s handling of two recalcitrant would-be allies, the brutish King Gundleus (Simon Merrells) and the calculating King Gorfydd (Aneirin Hughes), injects some prickly political intrigue into what otherwise could have descended into a straightforward cycle of violence and revenge.

Yet there’s never enough tension over whether Arthur’s efforts will prove successful. The Winter King paints him as practically superhuman in his knack for always being right and just and seeing five moves ahead. De Caestecker meets this challenge by projecting strength through stillness. He plays Arthur as a man secure in his own abilities, who can channel drama or strength when they’re called for but who otherwise prioritizes careful observation and deliberate action over impulse or bluster. (At least for now — the impending arrival of Jordan Alexandra’s Guinevere could yet reveal a more passionate side in the second half of the season.)

But Arthur is most compelling when he’s not the perfect stoic hero, when he’s allowed to be warm or unsure or even plain wrong. Aside from that bloody opening, Arthur’s most disarming scene comes when he and his sister, the spiritually gifted Morgan (Valene Kane), reminisce about the mother they lost in childhood. Arthur recalls her as “the most beautiful, clever and wonderful mother a boy could wish for”; Morgan remembers her as a cold woman who took no pleasure in her son. Arthur’s reserve has made him something of a cipher to this point, but the exchange hints at the eager and uncertain boy he must have been once. It’s a rare moment in which we can see what the The Winter King so wants to show us: not Arthur as an infallible legend, but Arthur as simply a man.