At first it was a rubbish kids show, but the second season was very very good. The BBC show about Merlin as a boy seems set in a version of (pre) Arthurian Britain (the time of his father, Uther), that is also purely fantasy. Either that or I display stunning ingnorance of the Britain of that era. Does anyone know more about the setting as envisioned in Merlin; it seems that Camelot is surrounded by magical (and not magical) kingdoms dreamed up by the writers.