• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 18, 2023

In the premiere episode of “The Winter King,” a new MGM+ limited series about King Arthur, the legendary hero is positioned as a man who stands out from all others in at least one important respect.

He is the only person in the show who takes a shower. The rest of the show’s manly men are too busy growling, grimacing and reciting cruel soliloquies to bathe.

Chief among the dirty faces is High King Uther (played by the always excellent Eddie Marsan) who early in the premiere throws a huge, dramatic fit and banishes Arthur, his illegitimate son, from all territories of the realm.

Arthur’s “crime”: He led some of the king’s warriors into a battle with the dreaded Saxons and lost. This kind of result angers kings, apparently.

And thus, the banished heir wandered -- all the way to Gaul, where he is seen after a victorious battle washing his body of blood and grime beneath a small waterfall.

An underling remarks that their leader likes to clean up after battle, a habit apparently strange to the rest of fifth-century society.

We in the modern day know that Arthur (played by Ian De Caestecker, pictured above) is on the right track with his cleanliness.

And we also know -- or think we know -- that he is on his way to becoming a hero of English legend, if not in reality.

According to historical sources online, the story of King Arthur and his exploits are said to have taken place in the fourth and fifth centuries, but the first accounts of them came hundreds of years later. Their truth or falsehood is in dispute.

Nevertheless, his story has proven durable enough to be told and retold again and again. In this one as in all the others, Arthur is destined to play a key role in the formation of a powerful early version of Great Britain.

A lot is at stake in this game of thrones, which explains all the over-wrought, life-or-death speech-making.

In one of his quieter moments, King Uthur explains to a family member why he is making an uneasy peace with a rival king he should have slain on the spot.

“Keep your enemies close, right?” says he, echoing a line everyone remembers from “The Godfather, Part II.” 

“The Winter King” is an epic tale that will enthrall King Arthur fans of most ages (scenes of grotesque bloodshed will only traumatize the little ones).

It is also an epic for the premium cable channel once known as Epix before it was rebranded as MGM+ last January.

“The Winter King” premieres on Sunday (August 20) on MGM+.