Executive producers Julie Gardner and Lachlan MacKinnon say The Winter King, their adaptation of Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles book series, puts a fresh spin on the centuries-old Arthurian legend, while maintaining much of what makes it a timeless tale.
Airing Sunday nights on MGM+, the fantasy drama is set in the 5th century when warring tribes occupied what is now Great Britain.
The story follows the evolution from outcast to leader of Arthur Pendragon (Iain De Caestecker), the illegitimate son of High King Uther (Eddie Marsan).
The series co-stars Ellie James as Nimue, Nathaniel Martello-White as Merlin, Valene Kane as Morgan and Jordan Alexandra as Guinevere.
"We were very fortunate to have the rights to Bernard Cornwell's trilogy of novels. So, that was one of the guiding principles to what we wanted to adapt," Gardner told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"But, also, I had loved -- all of us had loved -- the Arthurian legend told through all the iterations, through decades and generations beyond," she added. "We were trying to peer beyond the icon. When you hear Arthur or Guinevere -- or, eventually in Season 2, Lancelot -- these are iconic names, but you want to get behind them and characterize them and get to their humanity."
Gardner thinks the Arthurian stories -- with their themes of romance, fraught family relationships and political division -- have endured for so long because people are still fundamentally the same as they were more than a millenium ago.
"It's looking at what it is to be human and the universal personal choices we all make," she said.
Season 1 of The Winter King kicks off with the new backstory of Arthur's banishment from his father's kingdom after a disastrous outcome on the battlefield.
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"We were thinking about, 'How do we start a character who's going to go on this extraordinary journey to leadership and who is going to make sacrifices and mistakes along the way?'" Gardner said.
"We wanted to almost do the origin story of who makes him the character that he is," she added. "The central hope was to ground it and get really behind these iconic names in literature and our culture."
MacKinnon said Cornwell's books depict sides of Arthur that have never been shown before in books, film or TV.
"That was such a gift for us as the program makers and also for Kate [Brooke] and Ed [Whitmore] our writers who took that to the next level," MacKinnon explained.
"What we all loved about Bernard's adaptation was the way that he also focused on the female characters and really gave them agency in the story," he added. "It felt really fresh and we loved the way he'd written Morgan and Guinevere."
One of the major themes of the series is leadership, with Uther exemplifying one style of ruling and Arthur showing the promise of quite another.
"Like many leaders we see, he's been in power for so long at this point, he's probably traumatized by the weight of power. He's quite closed," Gardner said of Uther.
"He's very astute in that scene where he banishes Arthur. He is very astute in how he calls out the other warlords for failing to help, failing to join in. He knows the world he is in. He knows the danger. He sees the danger."
On the other hand, Arthur grows up as an outsider without the power and trappings of royalty that legitimate heirs to the throne are afforded.
"It starts as a negative, but it becomes his strength because he can see the world differently," she said.
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"He's traveled further than Uther ever did. He has experienced other cultures in a way that Uther never did. He comes back with fresh thinking, which means he acts in ways that are unexpected," she added. "It's a fresh perspective on power and how to fix the problems of the time."
During his adventures, Arthur is seen spending time in the community of Avalon where Nimue and Merlin live and where wool-dying is the chief industry and commodity.
"What we wanted to dig more into was the 5th century and what would that look like?" MacKinnon said.
"It was important for us to have a narrative about the world of Merlin and Nimue," he added. "We started building Avalon around this idea of wool. ... All of the workers are preparing the wool, preparing the sheep."
The filmmakers relied as much as they could on practical sets and effects, rather than computer animation to create these settings.
"We are not set in the medieval period. We are set in the Dark Ages period, which, frankly, makes all our lives harder," Gardner laughed.
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"You can't go to [film] a great medieval castle in Wales. You are building from the ground up. What that means is that everything needs to be functional and have a purpose. It was a great way to approach the season because I think that it seeps into everything you do and the overall tone of the piece."