Absolute fantasy

That damn Xena has a lot to answer for. Ever since she started messing with accepted mythology and capered around the ancient world using current slang and dressing in modern materials the number of faux historical/mythological TV series has continued to increase. Xena was followed by the execrable Hercules, which also played hard and fast with cherished heroes and villains from our fantastic past. Even the latest BBC version of Robin Hood fell into this unfortunate state of affairs and the use of modern language and pop-culture references made the viewing fun but completely divorced from the accepted stories of the green garbed hero. Now the new series, 'Merlin', has arrived to do more damage to the legends of King Arthur and give children a silly revision of the wonderful stories that are apparently tailored for the Facebook generation. Maybe it's just me, but the use of modern dress materials, current language and slang does tend to detract from the stories. It seems a pity that producers and writers appear to feel that they have to modernize all these wonderful stories. At least they should try a little bit to have some respect for these yarns and some acquaintance with historical realism. It's interesting that the producers of a totally fantastic series such as Dr. Who take great pains to get everything 'right' when shooting a story set in the past. I don't think I'll continue to watch Merlin, it will just annoy me. That's why I stopped watching Robin Hood - it was rubbish.