THE WINTER KING
ARTHURIAN LEGEND COMBINES WITH THE WEST WING-STYLE POLITICKING AS BERNARD CORNWELL’S NOVEL THE WINTER KING COMES TO THE SMALL SCREEN
ISITING AN OLD warehouse might not sound like a fun day out… but what if if transports you to fifth century Britain, to hang out chez Merlin, hold Excalibur, and chat with Arthur (son of Uther) about, er, coprophagic horses? All three are on the schedule when SFX visits a Bristol trading estate which is home to new Arthurian TV series The Winter King. It’s a title fans of Sharpe creator Bernard Cornwell should recognise, being the first entry in his ’90s trilogy The Warlord Chronicles.
FOAM HOME
Sets don’t usually start outside the studio. This one does though, with a wall of “rock” – actually blocks of polyurethane insulation foam – built onto an external wall. As we visit, during the final days of a 27-week shoot, this area’s been repurposed as a stony shoreline, but previously it served as the entrance to Caer Cadarn, capital of Dumnonia, the territory ruled by High King Uther Pendragon.
Curiously, it’s noticeably colder inside the building than outside, to the point where on entering, your SFX hack is immediately prompted to zip up their hoodie. Could it be haunted by the ghosts of fallen warriors? Or maybe it’s a legacy of its previous use as a refrigeration depot. Probably that.
Breath visibly misting, we tour Uther’s gloomy, brutalist seat of power: a cave network inside a mountain. On-screen, as characters make their arrivals, location work in a quarry near Merthyr Tydfil will be seamlessly stitched together with the transition from the backlot into the interior sets – for which, executive producer Lachlan MacKinnon tells SFX, there was an unexpected reference point.
“The one thing Otto [Bathurst, lead director] was always talking about was, ‘This should feel like Churchill’s War Rooms – where those big decisions of state are made. We loved the idea of their strategic hub being built in a mountain, rather than just something that sits on top.”
We peek into Uther’s bedchamber, taking in decorative copper strips and grooved textures on the walls, and explore a map room heaped with “tally sticks” – lengths of wood, notched to record payments to the King. Another key location, deep in the countryside, is Avalon, home to a 30-foot-high tor which Merlin calls home. We wander the circular interior set – not your average pad. Well, unless having three menhirs in your living room has become à la mode since we last redecorated…
If we
