‘Pendragon’ takes the long road to King Arthur — and makes it worth the journey

A reasonable viewer could spend the opening minutes of “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” wondering whether he clicked on the wrong show.

Daily Wire promised an Arthurian epic, yet here are the doomed inhabitants of Atlantis, bull dancers, pagan priests, and a princess named Charis fleeing a civilization about to sink beneath the sea. Camelot is nowhere in sight; neither is Arthur.

Christianity belongs to the world of ‘Pendragon’ as naturally as its mud, blood, and steel.

That bewilderment contains the key to the series and its considerable ambition. “The Pendragon Cycle” is not another retelling of the sword in the stone. Instead, it attempts to dramatize what had to happen before Arthur could arrive: the transformation of a pagan world into one capable of producing